Caramel-Stuffed Sea Salt Brownies

Caramel-Stuffed Sea Salt Brownies - made May 2, 2015 from Extreme Brownies by Connie Weis

I almost forgot I had this brownie book. Okay, not really, but it was high time I went back to it to try out more brownie recipes before it joins the other baking books gathering dust on my bookshelves. I love making brownies and can’t get away from it. And really, I also love eating them so it’s a win-win.

Given the other recipes I’ve tried from this book, I had high expectations that this would be a rich, fudgy brownie and I was not disappointed. Bonus that it’s got a layer of caramel sandwiched in the middle, topped with a thin layer of milk chocolate and sprinkled with fleur de sel. The only surprise in this recipe was the flour that gets whisked into the caramel. Never had that before but it worked just fine.

Do be careful about covering as much of the caramel as possible with the top layer of brownie batter. Caramel, when exposed directly to high heat will harden when it cools and could be too hard and chewy to eat. Which would be a waste of good caramel…..we can’t have that. The other tricky part is the toothpick test is somewhat unreliable if you poke the toothpick straight down into the brownie. The caramel layer is gooey enough to give you a “false negative” that the brownie isn’t done when it could be but all you’re seeing is the goo from the caramel. I recommend angling the toothpick when you insert it so most of it is going through the top layer and not the caramel itself.

The milk chocolate layer on top is a nice touch if your teeth aren’t aching at this point and you’ve still got room in your waist band. It gives the sea salt or fleur de sel something to adhere to when you sprinkle it on top. Overall, loved this brownie. It’s rich, it’s fudgy, it’s decadent and it’s everything a brownie should be. And more.

Caramel layer

1/3 cup and 1 teaspoon (3 ounces) heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter
12 ounces caramel (I used Kraft caramel squares)
2 tablespoons and 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Brownie
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into slices
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup (6 ounces) bittersweet chocolate chips
4 large eggs
1 cup (7 ounces) granulated sugar
1 packed cup (8 ounces) light brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup (4.5 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Milk Chocolate Glaze
3 1/2 teaspoons canola oil
3/4 cup and 1 tablespoon (5 ounces) milk chocolate chips

Garnish
1 to 2 teaspoons flaked sea salt

1. Caramel layer: place the cream and butter in a 2-quart saucepan. Begin to melt the mixture over medium-low heat. Unwrap the caramels and add to the mixture. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until caramels are melted and completely smooth. While the caramels are slowly melting, make the brownie batter. Finish preparing the caramel once the brownie base is in the oven.
2. Make the brownies: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13-inch baking pan with aluminum foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
3. In a small, heavy saucepan, melt butter with unsweetened chocolate and semisweet chocolate chips. Whisk until smooth and completely melted. Set aside to cool slightly.
4. Lightly beat the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Whisk in sugars and salt until just combined. Whisk in the melted chocolate mixture until just combined. Whisk in vanilla.
5. Add flour and baking powder and stir to combine. Pour half (1 pound and 4 ounces) of the brownie batter into the prepared pan. Spread evenly with a small offset spatula and bake for 15 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack. Finish the caramel while the brownie base is baking. The caramel should be poured onto the very hot brownie base as soon as it is removed from the oven.
6. To finish the caramel layer, once the caramels are completely melted and smooth, sift the flour directly onto the mixture and stir in well. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour the cooked caramel over the hot brownie base and spread evenly with a small offset spatula. Dollop the remaining brownie batter evenly over the caramel layer and carefully spread to the edges with the offset spatula, covering the caramel layer completely.
7. Return the pan to the oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let cool for at least 15 minutes.
8. Milk chocolate glaze: Place the milk chocolate and canola oil in the top half of a double boiler set over hot water. Stir until melted and smooth. Pour the glaze evenly over the warm brownie.
9. Using a small offset spatula, spread the glaze evenly and sprinkle the sea salt over the glaze. Let the glazed slab sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes, then refrigerate pan overnight or for 7-8 hours. Cut into squares.

Pop Up Shop: Dragonfly Cakes

Dragonfly Cakes - Pop Up Shop on May 7, 2015

So….I’m a sucker for supporting local, small foodie businesses. I’ll twist myself into pretzel contortions trying to decide if I should pay $14 for a cookbook but not think twice about forking over $5 for a croissant made with European butter at a local bakery. I implement the 24-hour rule and do mental gymnastics over a blouse that’s been marked down and is another 40% off and I have a $10 reward certificate to defray the cost even further but apparently I’ll shell out $32 for a box of petit fours without much thought or restraint if it meant supporting a local small business. I’m not even a particularly big fan of petit fours, mind you.

But Dragonfly Cakes came to our pop up shop in the days leading up to Mother’s Day so my Pavlovian response was to hotfoot it over, wallet in hand and make small talk with the very nice vendor lady who proffered me samples of their wares, told me about their business in Sausalito and how they did mostly a mail order business and talked about the different flavors they offered: chocolate, coffee, apricot, lemon and vanilla. Not two minutes had passed before I was opening up my wallet and leaving with a box of lemon and vanilla petit fours.

Petits fours are basically small layer cakes covered typically in fondant icing and nicely decorated. They usually come in a variety of flavors, colors and decorations. Because of their typical box square shape, they can easily be made to look like little presents. We made them in culinary school and you basically bake thin oblong cake layers, frost each layer, stack the layers, cut into perfectly even squares then glaze them evenly and perfectly all at once by having the squares very close together on a wire rack and pouring the glaze over all of the square pieces. If you do it right, the glaze covers them neatly, evenly and completely; when it hardens, you have perfect petit fours ready for decorating.

I’ll be honest – one of the reasons I’m not fond of petit fours is because perfect and even would not describe my efforts when I made them. It takes some skill to cut each piece the same shape and size and even more skill to glaze them evenly. On top of that, decorating skills including precision piping and fondant work serve a petit four maker well. I possess none of these skills. Seriously, none. Wait, I can bake a cake and I can fill them between layers. Then my skills hit the glass ceiling.

Fortunately I don’t work at Dragonfly Cakes and they don’t have that problem. Their petit fours are beautiful. I tried a sample of the coffee petit fours and the lemon one. I didn’t need to try both but I had started with the coffee and as I was perusing the display at the pop up shop, was considering the box of lemon and vanilla petit fours to buy. So then I had to taste the lemon, right? I didn’t want to be a total pig and have two samples but the Dragonfly lady assured me she had plenty of samples and that I should help myself. Okay then. I mean, I wanted to be polite, right?

Both samples were good and if I was a petit fours gourmand, I would probably have appreciated them more. As it was, I thought they were nice little cakes, not too sweet. And they were pretty. Petit fours must be pretty because if you’re going to go to all that trouble to make and decorate them, they need to look cute. I bought a box, more to support the business, than because I wanted a dozen petit fours. Fortunately, I could share them with friends and my mom for Mother’s Day. Go small biz.

Biscoff-Stuffed Snickerdoodles

Biscoff-Stuffed Snickerdoodles - made dough May 9, 2015 from The Biscoff Cookie & Spread Cookbook by Katrina Bahl

Don’t put away that jar of cookie butter just yet. Yes, another recipe using Biscoff or Speculoos, your choice. This time we take the classic snickerdoodle and up the ante by “stuffing” it with cookie butter.

Of course, you don’t actually stuff it, not like you would a turkey, for instance. Instead, you portion off some snickerdoodle cookie dough, flatten into a thick disc, put a dollop of cookie butter in the center, and then either wrap the dough around it or place another disc of cookie dough over it and seal the edges. It depends on how big you make your disc and whether it’s enough to enclose the cookie butter completely.

I do a combination of both. I use enough dough to come up the sides of the cookie butter dollop but not enough to completely enclose it so I put a bit more dough on top, seal any cracks and roll into a smooth ball. Then, because I’m almost incapable of baking cookie dough without freezing it first (because I like thicker cookies), I do place them in freezer bags and deposit in my freezer until I’m ready. 

I do not roll the dough balls in cinnamon sugar until I’m ready to bake them. You might want to take the dough balls out of the freezer once you turn your oven on to preheat then roll them in the cinnamon sugar right before you line them up on the baking sheet and put in the oven. That gives them a few minutes to thaw which will help the cinnamon sugar adhere better. If you’re having difficulty coating them, let them thaw for a little longer (5-10 minutes usually does the trick) then roll them again. When you take the cookies out of the oven, sprinkle more cinnamon sugar on top while they’re still hot. Be careful not to overbake them! 

I thought these cookies were delicious. I like the cookie butter paired with the vanilla butter cinnamon flavor as the more vanilla flavor provides a good backdrop to showcase the cookie butter flavor. I gave some to a friend who visited me for dinner and his feedback the next day was “it was GOOOOODDDDD”.  I think I got the right number of O’s and D’s from his email in there. So there you have it: a third party endorsement of this cookie. 

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup creamy Biscoff spread

1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt and cream of tartar.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together for 2 minutes until light and fluffy.
3. Add vanilla and egg until incorporated.
4. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients until just combined.
5. Using a small cookie scoop, scoop out balls of dough and flatten into discs. Place a spoonful of Biscoff cookie spread in the middle of one and place another disc on top, sealing the edges to encase the cookie butter completely. Roll gently into a round ball. Repeat with remaining dough. Chill or freeze for several hours until firm.
6. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll dough balls in cinnamon-sugar mixture and space evenly on cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake 10-12 minutes and remove to wire rack to cool completely. Sprinkle with more cinnamon-sugar if desired.

Biscoff Sheet Cake

Biscoff Sheet Cake - made April 28, 2015, adapted from Biscoff Cookie & Spread Cookbook by Katrina Bahl

Before I get into the recipe, I want to note that my blog hit a milestone sometime over the night and surpassed 1 million page views - yay! I started my blog 6 years and 8 months ago, almost to the day and never thought far enough ahead of how long I would keep this up or dreamed that I would get to a million views. Thanks to everyone who contributed to that number! In the early days, I used to marvel at getting any page views at all :). So thank you! Now back to the regularly scheduled programming....

Second recipe from my new baking book and it’s another winner. You know how much I love my sheet cakes. This is made in a similar manner to a Texas Fudge Cake and is equally easy to make and equally delicious as well.

The cake itself doesn’t have a strong cookie butter flavor but it has a great cakey texture and the frosting on top contributes the additional cookie butter dimension. If you want to make this even easier and amp up the cookie butter, you can skip the frosting and just frost it with straight cookie butter. If you’re going to do that, though, let the cake cool for at least 5-10 minutes then frost the cake while it’s warm rather than when it’s still oven-hot. Either way, yeah, it’s really good.

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

½ cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ cup creamy Biscoff spread

1 cup water

½ cup butter

1 cup chocolate chips, optional (I left them out)

Frosting

½ cup butter

1/3 cup buttermilk

½ cup creamy Biscoff spread

3 ½ cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 pan with aluminum foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Whisk together the sugars, flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk and vanilla; set aside.
4. In a medium saucepan, bring Biscoff spread, water and butter to a boil. Remove from heat and add the dry ingredients followed by the egg mixture. Stir well and transfer to prepared pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips if desired.
5. Frosting: Bring butter, buttermilk and Biscoff spread to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in the powdered sugar followed by the vanilla. The frosting will be thick.
6. Pour evenly over the cake while the cake is still warm from the oven and the frosting is still hot.

Biscoff Cloud Cookies

Biscoff Cloud Cookies - made dough April 28, 2015 from The Biscoff Cookie & Spread Cookbook by Katrina Bahl

Meet my new favorite cookie. I’m not even kidding. I’m sure something else will supplant it at some future point but for now, it’s the Cookie Butter Cloud Cookie. You know how I’ve felt like I was in a baking slump? Nothing on pinterest looked interesting to me and I’d even started deleting pins from my baking pinboards because, let’s face it, I’d had  them pinned for so long without making them that it was unlikely I’d ever make them. I got tired of the pins mocking me so I deleted them. Let’s hear it for conflict avoidance.

I tried turning to my existing baking books because somewhere in 200+ books, there should be “a few” recipes I’d want to make, right? But, like my pinned recipes, some of my baking books I’d flipped through so often and tagged what I wanted to make (that’s how we “pinned” things the old-fashioned way) that nothing looked exciting or compelling for me to make. Which is a bad sign of the baking slump I was in.

So like any good baker with recipe ADD, I did the logical thing. If 200 baking books don’t yield a recipe you want to try and the endless recipes on the interest don’t captivate the baking muse, you talk yourself into buying another baking book. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to because I have “enough”. In my defense, I instituted all the normal shopping rules: wait 24 hours, keep asking myself “do I really need it?” (Of course not. Doesn’t matter.) Then buy it anyway because sometimes being an adult gets old and $14 isn’t going to break my budget.

The book was smaller than I expected and in paperback; apparently $14 doesn’t buy as much as it used to. No matter. On my first pass, I tagged half a dozen recipes I wanted to make right off the bat. That’s how it usually goes when I get a new cookbook. I’m all fired up to bake every single recipe in it, bake a few then it joins the ranks on my bookshelves until I think to pick it up again and try to rekindle that initial spark.

No matter, it’s new, it’s fascinating and this is the first recipe I made from it. And it’s a winner. Doesn’t spread much, the edges get crisp, the cookie butter flavor says “hello, here I am” and the texture is amazing. If you like chewy cookies and abhor cakey cookies, this is the cookie for you. Of course, as always, do not overbake. 8 minutes like the recipe says or, if your oven doesn’t blast as hot as it should, 10 minutes tops. Let it set or it’ll be too gooey and the edges won’t be crisp if you eat it too soon. If you want to foray all the way to the end of the decadence spectrum, add a dollop of cookie butter on top while it’s just barely lukewarm then let your teeth sink into blissful goodness. Ah, cookie butter.

½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/3 cup creamy Biscoff spread

¾ cup brown sugar, packed

½ cup granulated sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon cornstarch

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together butter, Biscoff spread, brown sugar and granulated sugar at medium speed until combined.
2. Add egg and vanilla and beat on low speed until combined.
3. Whisk dry ingredients together and add in two batches to the butter-sugar mixture. Mix only until just combined.
4. Form into golf-ball-sized dough balls and chill or freeze until firm, several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and space cookies evenly, 2 inches apart.
6. Bake for 8 minutes, remove from oven and let cool for several minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Let cool completely.

Restaurant Review: Willow Street Pizza

Willow Street Pizza - dinner on March 20, 2015

This is a long overdue restaurant review, mostly because I forgot I’d gone there and hadn’t blogged about it at the time. So it’ll be a quick one since all the (I’m sure) witty things I was going to write about have escaped my memory and would only fall flat now if I took a stab at resurrecting them. I hate when that happens.

In any case, I met a friend here, partly because it was close to her house and convenient for her to skip out on her husband and kids to meet me for dinner and partly because my cousin Christine gave me a gift card to Willow St. Two birds, one stone.

We got there fairly early (6 pm) so while the restaurant was somewhat full, it wasn’t overly crowded and we didn’t have to wait long for a table. Probably because we were willing to sit at a high top close to the bar area. I’d been to Willow St before but not for some years. I had a vague recollection that their pizza was pretty good but I didn’t know that I was in the mood for a pizza. I compromised and got the calzone. My friend Cindy went further afield with a burger.

The sign of a good pizza place is how good their crust is. Which can also be signaled by their bread as presumably it’s a similar, if not the exact same, recipe. Our server brought out a round loaf of still-warm bread. Bliss. It’s hard not to like warm bread and the carbo gods know they have my number. My chicken pesto calzone was also pretty good, albeit the pesto “sauce” was more liquid than I would’ve liked and soaked into the bread. But that didn’t stop me from (over) eating the generous portion they served. Hey, it was good and I was hungry.

For once I didn’t get dessert. I know, I’m disappointed in myself too but honestly, it was a really big calzone and I shouldn’t have eaten it all but I did. Serves me right. It just means I have to go back again, plan more carefully and save room for dessert.

Biscoff Mug Cake

Biscoff Mug Cake - made April 24, 2015 from Country Cleaver

I should declare this Cookie Butter Week. Or however long it’ll take me to blog the next few recipes in which cookie butter is going to be the star ingredient. Sometimes I have a one-track mind and that track gave way to the cookie butter train.

Although 95% of the stuff I bake I give away, every so often, I make an individual dessert that’s only enough to be consumed by me, me, me. Because let’s face it, sometimes I don’t want to make a big baking production and I just want a bite or two of something. Enter the mug cake.

I’ve tried making a mug cake before but I overestimated the cooking and underestimated the strength of my microwave so I ended up with a mug of overbaked, rubbery cake. It wasn’t pretty. The only thing that got me to try again was seeing this recipe for Biscoff Mug Cake on pinterest.  The beauty of mug cakes is you mix the ingredients in a mug, pop it in the microwave and in a minute or two, you have dessert. All made from scratch and all you have to wash afterwards is the mug, the fork you used to mix the ingredients with and the spoon you used to eat it.

This was no different. Add the ingredients, blend briskly with a fork, pop it in the microwave and then hover to make sure you don’t overcook it again. This took less than 2 minutes to “bake”. I checked it at a minute and a half then popped it back in for 15 more seconds. Take it out, snap a picture and – I can’t lie – top with a spoonful of cookie butter to melt over the hot cake, take more pictures, take a bite. Then swoon.

This was delicious. The cake itself wasn’t super cookie-butter-flavored so it helped to have the cookie butter “frosting” over it. But the texture was nicely cakelike and it’s hard to fuss about warm cake with cookie butter melting over it. The only thing I would caution is this made a sizeable mug cake, enough for 2 servings. It’s best eaten warm so you might want to grab a second spoon and share it with someone. The best thing is if you eat it too fast and it wasn’t enough for the both of you, you can whip up another one and be eating a second mug three minutes later.

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons Biscoff spread

In a large mug, whisk together all ingredients until smooth. Microwave for 2-3 minutes, or until set. Each microwave is different, use your best judgement for your machine.

Let cool until you can handle the mugs, they will be hot. Top with a small dollop of Biscoff spread so it melts or top with whipped cream. Serve while warm.

Restaurant Review: Tong Soon Garden

Tong Soon Garden - dinner on May 1, 2015, 4-star rating on yelp

I met a friend for dinner last week. We always like to try new places either around where we work or live to check out local restaurants. Yelp is an invaluable source when we need suggestions of where to eat.

This time around, we went for Chinese food at Tong Soon Garden. I was caught in traffic and ended up a few minutes late, exacerbated by the fact that I missed the restaurant the first time around because it was literally right on the main street and not tucked away in a strip mall like I had thought so I overshot it and had to double back.

Fortunately it wasn’t that crowded so we already had a table. The menu was a standard Chinese menu, meaning lots of choices. Price points were slightly higher, meaning most main dishes were in the $10-$15 range. Most Chinese restaurants typically have a good selection in the $10 or under price point. However, the higher range was immediately explainable when our orders came out in much larger portions than I’m used to getting at a typical Chinese restaurant. They were definitely on the generous side.

Fried Chicken Wings

We ordered an appetizer of fried chicken wings, Sweet and Sour Pork Peking Style and Beef Chow Fun. There were only 2 of us but we had enough to feed at least 6 people. The wings were delicious and full of flavor as they also came in some sort of glaze. I was less thrilled with the Sweet and Sour Pork Peking Style. I ordered it Peking style because, based on my experiences in other restaurants, it had more flavor and sweetness than the regular sweet and sour pork. Which was also true in this case but the sauce wasn’t as good as I’ve had elsewhere and the pork pieces were on the skinny side, especially when you factor in the breading. Actually, it had more breading than I expected as I also thought Peking style meant less breading.

Sweet and Sour Pork, Peking Style

The Beef Chow Fun was good but the beef to noodles ratio leaned a bit skimpy on the beef and there were lots of chow fun noodles. I also didn’t like the bean sprouts and would’ve preferred the dish without it. So of the 3 dishes, the fried chicken wings were the best. I also have to give props to the service as they were quick. Our food came out so fast it made me wonder how much was ready-made and just sitting by the kitchen door. Except for the chow fun, the other two dishes had to be fried at the last minute to have crispy exteriors and the mere minutes between ordering and the food arriving didn’t seem like enough time to fry that much food. Yet they were crispy where they should’ve been.

Beef Chow Fun

If you want a nice Chinese restaurant for a large party with fast service, this is a good place to go. Parking in the back isn’t all that plentiful so I suggest car pooling. You can park on the street but since it’s in the main drag with lots of traffic, I don’t recommend it.