Going back to red velvet

I combine my love of baking with my love of reading when I read culinary mysteries. Some notable authors of the genre are: Virginia Rich, Diane Mott Davidson, and Joanne Fluke. I love a good mystery and when the books are based on characters who bake or cook for a living with recipes sprinkled throughout the chapters - well, what's not to love?

This is a picture of red velvet cookies whose recipe is from The Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke, who writes the Hannah Swensen mystery series. Normally I don't try a lot of the recipes in the books but I was going through my red velvet cake obsession at the time that I read this book so I had to try the cookie version. Am I glad I did. These are to-die-for cookies. Essentially they're chocolate cookies with red food coloring just as red velvet cake is chocolate cake with red food coloring. Like the cake, these cookies are frosted with cream cheese frosting. My nieces love these cookies and they're perfect for Christmas and Valentine's Day because of their color. The only drawback is because they're frosted, you can't stack them or package them for mailing. They don't spread much and stay nice and thick. This is one of the few cookies I'm actually very careful to time in the oven. Due to their color, you can't tell when they're done by appearance alone and you don't want to overbake these. They're perfect just slightly underbaked as they're nice and fudgy. The cream cheese frosting provides a nice contrast to cut the richness of the cookie with the sweetness of the frosting.

Red Velvet Cookies

2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate
½ cup (1 stick) butter at room temperature
2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/3 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 tablespoon red food coloring
¾ cup sour cream
2 cups flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it)
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

1. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper. Spray the parchment paper with nonstick cooking spray. Melt chocolate and let cool.
2. Combine the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat them on medium speed until they’re smooth. This should take less than a minute.
3. Add the baking soda and salt, and resume beating on medium again for another minute, or until they’re incorporated. Add the egg and beat on medium speed until the batter is smooth. Add the red food coloring and mix for about 30 seconds.
4. Shut off the mixer and scrape down the bowl. Then add the melted chocolate and mix again for another minute on medium speed. Shut off the mixer and scrape down the bowl again. At low speed, mix in half the flour. When the flour is incorporated, mix in the sour cream.
5. Scrape down the bowl again and add the rest of the flour. Beat until the flour is fully incorporated. Remove the bowl from the mixer and give it a stir with a spoon. Mix in the chocolate chips by hand.
6. Use a teaspoon to spoon the dough onto the parchment-lined cookie sheets, 12 cookies to a standard-sized sheet. Bake the cookies at 375˚F for 9 to 11 minutes, or until they rise and become firm. Slide the parchment from the cookie sheets and onto a wire rack. Let the cookies cool on the rack.

Cream Cheese Frosting

¼ cup butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1. Mix the softened butter with the softened cream cheese and the vanilla until the mixture is smooth.
2. Add the confectioners’ sugar in half-cup increments until the frosting is of proper spreading consistency.


Oh and I did bake tonight after work but it was Petra's Banana Bread recipe that I already posted about. My aunt and uncle are arriving this weekend from Canada for my dad's 70th birthday and this is one of my aunt's favorites so I had to make enough for her to enjoy while she's here and some for her to take home to my cousins back in Winnipeg.

A Random Act of Kindness

Can I say I love my coworkers because they’re an awesome bunch of people? Today, my friend and coworker, Erin, came over and surprised me with a signed copy of The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. She had been to a book signing/talk by Alice Waters at Berkeley and presented the cookbook to me from the Yahoo! for Good team – talk about a random act of kindness! Erin was also very sweet and told me how appreciated I am – always a nice thing to hear from good people, especially with the mountain of work that had been crushing my spirit lately. Incidences like these and people like Erin never fail to remind me why I am where I am and why I’m grateful for it.

One of my favorite things to do when someone gives me a cookbook as a present is to make something from that cookbook and give it to the giver. To me, that's one of the best things about getting a cookbook. It can literally be the gift that keeps on giving. So, YFG team, you never know what you'll be surprised with in my baking future but it'll be coming your way soon.

No baking tonight as I’m having dinner with another group of current and former coworkers whose company I enjoy. Feeling very blessed indeed.

I can't believe I've gone through most of my baking life and never had red velvet cake until a few years ago. Where have I been?? I LOVE this cake. I first tried it when one of my coworkers, Nathan, had me try a test piece of a red velvet cake he was making for his mom (is that cute or what? I rarely meet guys who bake). When I was in New York a couple of years ago on a foodie trip, I visited every bakery I knew of or could find in Manhattan and came upon the red velvet cake from the Buttercup Bake Shop. It was fabulous!

I also heard of a bakery in New Orleans called Gambino's and people raved about their red velvet cake. I haven't made it to New Orleans yet but I always wanted to try their red velvet cake. Gambino's does ship but it's $70 for a cake! I couldn't bring myself to spring for it (hey, I'm cheap) but I came close to pulling the trigger so many times. Thankfully, I had an awesome boss who, last Christmas, for a holiday gift, he (or rather his exec assistant, Tess) ordered me the red velvet cake from Gambino's. They shipped it to the office and Tess drove it to my house to drop it off as my boss was on vacation. It was terrific. Not sure I would've paid $70 for it but that made the gift even more perfect, lol. I was able to share it with my family as one of our Christmas desserts. The picture of the whole, unsliced cake is the Gambino's one. For those who can't spring $70 for a Gambino's cake either, you can also get a slice of red velvet cake from the California Pizza Kitchen - it's not Gambino's or Buttercup's but it's still pretty good.

After that, I went through a period of trying recipe after recipe for red velvet cake. Most of them were just "okay" but none really came up to snuff. Some were too heavy, some not moist enough, some not "red" enough and some didn't have that much flavor. This past March, I was on a ski trip with my church singles group (ASCSA) and one of my condo mates, Diane, mentioned she had a red velvet cake recipe. Diane later sent me the recipe and yep, that one was the winner (pictured with the big ol' slices already cut out). I don't know how widely I'm allowed to share it so I'm not going to post it here but if anyone wants to try a good red velvet cake recipe, Bobby Flay's recipe on the Food Network is also pretty good.

Ironically, I have the Magnolia Bakery cookbook (they're the same owners as the Buttercup Bake Shop) and they have a red velvet cake recipe in there but I have yet to try it. Hmm, future baking project.

Chocolate Chocolate White Chocolate Cookies

You have to love a recipe that has the word "chocolate" in the title three times. If you’re a chocolate fan like me, you know the importance of good quality chocolate. I’m not talking low-rent grocery store stuff. I’m talking break-the-bank, bust-the-budget high end chocolate – the kind that sounds European because it is European. And I don’t mean “European-style Hershey’s” either. When I was in culinary school, we had one class where we tasted different types of chocolate. Bliss. A class on chocolate tasting. Yeah, it’s as good as it sounds. That’s when I discovered that my favorite eating chocolate is Valrhona milk chocolate. I prefer milk chocolate anyway (see the chocolate chip blog post) and Valrhona is the epitome of creamy, good chocolate. There are other, expensive chocolates like Del Rey and Scharffenberger but I ended up liking Valrhona the best.

I would love to be able to say I’m a total chocolate snob and only ever eat the best. However, I’d rather not lie on my own blog. Truth of the matter is, for most of us, buying high end chocolate to eat is one thing and can occasionally be a great indulgence. Buying high end chocolate to bake with as much as I bake? I might as well take out a second mortgage on my house to be able to afford it. So I’ve learned to adjust my preferences to my paycheck and live within my means when it comes to buying baking ingredients. The trick is to gauge the importance chocolate plays in a recipe. If I’m making brownies, and chocolate is in equal or lesser proportions to sugar, butter, flour and the like, I settle for Hershey’s, Nestle's and Baker’s baking chocolate, especially if it’s unsweetened chocolate. If I’m making something like a flourless chocolate cake or chocolate cookies that have a high proportion of chocolate compared to the rest of the ingredients, I upscale it a bit with Lindt or Valrhona or even Ghirardelli. Fortunately you can find some good chocolate like Valrhona at Trader Joe’s for a somewhat reasonable price. I also scour the sale ads every week, ready to pounce when Lindt and comparable brands go on sale so I can stock up. The point is, buy the best quality chocolate you can afford. It’ll be worth it. This is another instance where I can give someone the same recipe I use but if I use Lindt and they use generic grocery store brand chocolate, their results are going to be different from mine. Quality chocolate will taste creamy and make you roll your eyes to the back of their sockets in ecstasy. Cheap chocolate will taste like chalk and crumble when you bite into it and leave a waxy aftertaste. A calorie is a calorie - which would you rather spend your daily total on?

I made the dough for these cookies this past weekend, shaped them into balls, put them in freezer bags, wrote their name, baking temp and baking time on the bag(s) and put them in my freezer. Best time saver in the world. I don’t have much time these days since that thing called a job gets in my way so I have to maximize my baking time. I make the dough on the weekends and I bake off the cookies during the week when I need them for something. I baked some off last night to bring into work this morning and I’m baking the rest tonight to bring to a coworker dinner tomorrow. Thereby also freeing up my freezer for this coming weekend’s baking efforts.

This recipe is from the Buttercup Bake Shop cookbook. The dough was pretty liquidy, not surprisingly because it has 4 eggs (most recipes only call for 2) and a large amount of melted chocolate. I had to chill the dough first to get it to firm up then shape it into balls, then freeze them, THEN put them in freezer bags and stow them in the freezer. The cookies turned out okay but while they didn’t spread too much, they did still spread and weren’t as thick as I normally prefer my cookies. I didn’t make the dough balls that big though so that could be partially why. It’s also because I don’t have a convection oven which tends to bake cookies fast enough to keep them thick and not spread so much. In any case, the taste was pretty good – a nice, basic chocolate cookie. It's pretty typical of other chocolate chocolate cookies I've made before so they don't really stand out to me.

My coworkers, who serve as willing guinea pigs, bless their hearts, seemed to like them. After baking for my various workplaces for years, I have my own gauge on how successful a recipe is. I get in around 8 am or earlier and will put the cookies out in the communal kitchen on my floor when I first arrive. How fast they disappear is a testament of how much people like them. Successes will usually be gone within an hour. If people really like them, I also get instant messages thanking me - these cookies rated 3 IMs and a personal thank you in the hallway this morning. So-so baked goods last a couple of hours. Failures might make it to lunchtime. And yes, I do have failures often enough. I bring them in anyway because I figure someone will eat them (and they do). If I consider something a total failure, I leave it on a different floor so they’re not associated with me. I have a reputation to protect after all.

Chocolate Chocolate White Chocolate Cookies

¾ cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted
2 cups vanilla (or white chocolate) chips

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
2. In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs, vanilla and espresso, and beat on high speed for about 2 minutes. Turn the mixer to low and mix in the melted chocolates, stopping to scrape the bowl. Resume mixing on low speed and add the dry ingredients, mixing well. Stop the mixer and stir in the vanilla chips.
4. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving several inches between for spreading. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool the cookies on the sheets for 1 minute, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

Lemon Bars - pucker up

I can make all sorts of complicated desserts that take a ton of time mixing, baking, layering, frosting, chilling, decorating, etc and yet you know what is one of the most frequently requested baked good I’m asked for? Lemon bars. Nice, simple, uncomplicated lemon bars. What makes a good lemon bar? To me, they have to have just the right tartness and amount of lemon. Too often the lemon curd part of the lemon bar is too mouth-puckeringly lemony. If I wanted that much lemony taste, I’m better off just sucking a lemon. Or else the curd is too gelatinous. I’m not a big custard-y type dessert eater (notable exception: crème brulee but we’ll get to that later) so the perfect lemon bar has equal amounts of shortbread crust and lemon curd which is curd, not lemon gelatin. And a light sprinkling of powdered sugar dusted on top, not a whole blanket of snow.

I’ve tried a fair number of lemon bar recipes over the years but I always come back to the first one I remember making which is from the Land O Lakes Treasury of Country Recipes cookbook. I even remember when I first made this – I was newly graduated from UC Berkeley, living in San Francisco and working for PG&E. I brought these into the office and one of the ladies there enjoyed it so much she asked me for the recipe. I gave it to her and she made it but told me afterwards that hers “didn’t turn out” like mine. This was a good 18 years ago and I hadn’t had the baking experience back then that I have now but I remember being baffled. The recipe isn’t that hard. I just followed it and I assumed anyone else who followed it would also get the same results. Apparently not so. Looking back and over the years with making this recipe, I’ve never varied the ingredients or took liberties with the amounts but I have adjusted baking times based on the pans I’m using and the ovens I’m baking in. While baking is more of a science than cooking, there is also some art involved. My biggest secret is I hardly ever time anything. I don’t use a timer and I’m lucky if I remember to check the time when I put something in the oven. Or I check the time then forget what it is later on. The times in recipes are just guidelines. Everyone’s oven is different so you have to adjust baking time accordingly. Depending on what I’m baking, I go by appearance (for cookies) or the toothpick method (for brownies and cakes). If you’re more of a novice baker, you might want to use a timer to start with until you get more comfortable with how something should look when it’s done. I just wing it.

On the subject of sharing recipes: I used to be really zealous about guarding my recipes. It’s not like I had any wildly original concoctions either. Most of my recipes are straight out of dessert cookbooks that anyone can buy. I make the recipe once as is then I add my own notes of how it turned out, modifications that should be made and what I could do better next time. For most recipes, I don’t really drastically change them but I do figure out how to bake them and bake them well. I always felt bad if someone asked me for a recipe and I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) share it. Let’s face it – asking for someone’s recipe is the most sincere compliment they can give you that they liked what you made. It’s kind of a slap in the face if you say no, you won’t share the recipe. In my defense, I did have reasons at the time (beyond being young and selfish).

A) I thought I would someday write my own cookbook and if I gave all those recipes away now, who would buy my cookbook later? That was just self-preservation, right? While I would still like to publish my own cookbook “someday”, the reality is it would take a lot more baking experimentation than I do today (which is mostly weekend tinkering) to write a cookbook. It takes original ideas, foolproof recipes, multiple iterations of the same thing over and over again and a ton of other work. In essence, it’d be a full-time job and frankly, I already have one of those.

B) The young and selfish part – I put in a lot of work in trying out many different recipes of something. For example, I went through a lot of lemon bar recipes to settle on the original one as the best. For someone to ask me to just hand it over felt like I was working for them for free and making it easy for them to get a great recipe. Where were they when I had to fit a Costco run into my busy schedule because I’d run out of butter and eggs? Where were they when I had to fork over $1 per lemon when I couldn’t get to Costco and had to succumb to Safeway’s or Lucky’s exorbitant grocery store prices? Okay, it sounds kinda dumb, childish and bratty when I write it out like that but that’s how I felt.

C) Too much pride in my baking – I don’t mean this in a narcissist way but I take a lot of pride in my baking hobby/passion/obsession and I love being able to provide baked treats for everyone. In my younger days, I was known for a chocolate caramel brownie recipe and I was very proud of being able to bake those brownies because, while the recipe seemed really simple, it took a lot of effort and months of trial and error to get it right. To this day, if I go too long without making them, I forget all the little tricks I used to get them right and I’ll mess up the recipe. It’s still good and if you’ve never had the “perfect” version, it’s just fine since you don’t know how much better it could be. I once made the “mistake” of giving that recipe to someone. She, in turn, started bringing them to the same gatherings I would go to and taking credit for my recipe. I cringed whenever I saw her passing off “my” brownies as hers, especially if they weren’t as good as I could have made them. That probably sounds narcissist. I don’t mean it to be. I also had other issues with this person. Think of the movie “Single White Female” and you’ll know where I’m coming from – the brownie thing was just the tip of the iceberg with this one.

In any case, for the most part, I’ve been able to let go of those hangups and am able to share recipes more freely. One of my favorite chef instructors at the Culinary Institute of America said he doesn’t see why people wouldn’t share recipes. Everyone makes things differently and recipes are meant to be shared. He’s right. I can attest some of my favorite recipes are from people who have shared them with me so I can do no less than to share what I have. I constantly, constantly have people ask me for my recipes and what I try to do is ask for a favorite recipe of theirs in return. Not to give something with strings because if they don’t have one, I still give them my recipe. But it’s my way of collecting different recipes that have people’s personal recommendation behind them which all of my recipes do.

One last thing on recipe sharing – I always share the recipe exactly as I make it. I’ve heard of people who don’t want to share their recipes changing the ingredients or leaving something out so that they’re not really giving out their true recipe. I don’t do that. Like I said, it’s a compliment to be asked for a recipe so giving them an altered one seems like returning a compliment with the insult of dishonesty. I’d rather someone tell me they’d rather not share a recipe than give me an inaccurate one. So if I give you a recipe and it “doesn’t turn out" like mine, I can honestly tell you that was the recipe I used. Ovens are different, quality of ingredients used might be different, baking steps taken might be done differently – there are a whole myriad of reasons why the recipe didn’t turn out exactly the same as mine but it won’t be because I didn’t give the same recipe I used.

Lemon Bars
Crust
1 1/3 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
½ cup butter, softened

Filling
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
3 tbsp lemon juice
powdered sugar

1. Heat oven to 350°F. In a small mixer bowl, combine all crust ingredients. Beat at low speed, scraping bowl often, until mixture is crumbly (2-3 minutes). Press on bottom of 8” square baking pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.
2. Meanwhile, in small mixer bowl combine all filling ingredients. Beat at low speed, scraping bowl often until well mixed. Pour filling over hot crust. Continue baking for 18-20 minutes or until filling is set. Sprinkle with powdered sugar; cool.

Bananas - they ripen in the blink of an eye

The banana is a cunning fruit. Deceptively alluring when you see them on the grocery store shelf – all nice and evenly yellow, showing the perfect state of ripeness with a firm texture without the chalky taste that comes with an underripe banana and without the mushy texture of an overly ripe banana. You buy a bunch and take them home, savoring that first one and effectively being lured into its deception. Because once you take your eye off that bunch of bananas and blink, somehow they manage to ripen. And ripen. Then ripen some more. Those once perfect yellow bananas with nary a blemish all of a sudden start showing brown spots. Oh, just a few at first, lulling you into thinking you still have time to eat them before they get too mushy. But then you blink again and now they’re more brown than yellow and the spots are ever bigger and the skin is not only no longer yellow but it’s also turning soft and seemingly getting thinner. You know if you peel that sucker, all you’ll get is mush and that overripe aftertaste in your mouth. Suddenly, they’re not fit for eating and they’re taking up smelly space on your countertop.

I’m convinced some exasperated yet thrifty person came up with the idea of banana bread. I can’t bear to throw overripe bananas out. I know I won’t eat them as is but I was raised not to waste food and it’s unconscionable to throw them out. Banana bread is the perfect way to use up those overripe bananas. Not only that but bananas must be overripe to the point of blackened skins and mushy-near-liquid insides to make really flavorful and moist banana bread. What you can’t eat straight is perfect for baking. I love bananas but when I can’t eat the overripe ones, banana bread is a perfectly acceptable use of them in baked goods (another exception to my I-don’t-like-fruity-desserts mantra). Now, I welcome the banana’s cunning artlessness of ripening before my eyes faster than I can consume them. I even deliberately buy more bananas than I can eat so that I can use what will become overripe ones to bake with. And if they ripen and I don’t have time to bake with them? No problem – just throw them in a freezer bag and deposit in the freezer until you’re ready. Careful what you put next to them though as the banana essence lives in the freezer and could permeate its taste and odor to whatever’s next to it.

This banana bread recipe is from my friend, Petra , who was one of my housemates at Asher House Berkeley when I was an undergrad. Back then, Petra was recently from her home country of Germany and affectionately known as “Kraut” by her fellow Asherites. Always smiling, always cheerful, Petra was a gem. She got this banana bread recipe from a friend of hers and it’s one I’ve used for years. It ranks with my recipes that not only have stood the test of time but I don’t feel the need to experiment with a bunch of different banana bread recipes because nothing really tops this one. Note its simplicity – just bananas. No nuts, no raisins, pineapple, apple or any other fancy things people add (much like carrot cake can be ruined – don’t ruin a good banana bread by adding too much “stuff” to it!). My mom likes nuts in her bread so sometimes I make a concession to her and place toasted nuts ON TOP of the loaf before baking but that’s the closest I’ll get to putting nuts in a quick bread.

The directions are sparse as that’s how I got the recipe but it’s not hard to figure out. The best thing you can do is use overripe bananas and take it from there. These freeze very well and I’m forever baking them as mini loaves and giving the loaves away as gifts.

1 7/8 cups flour
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup butter
1 cup mashed ripe bananas
2 large eggs
½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

1. Heat oven to 350°F.
2. Combine dry ingredients thoroughly in a large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients until batter is moistened.
3. Pour into greased loaf pans or muffin cups (about half full). Bake until desired doneness. Cover loosely with aluminum foil if top is getting too brown before bread is done.

Fruity desserts

Apple Cobbler

As a general rule, I'm not wild about fruit in desserts. Don't get me wrong - I really like most fruit. I eat apples, bananas, and fresh pineapple on a nearly daily basis. Can't go wrong with green grapes and strawberries, especially in the summer. Oranges are a favorite year round. But generally speaking, I like fruit as nature intended - wholesome and pure. Doing "stuff" to it usually doesn't go over with me.

However, there are notable exceptions which I'll expound on as I update this blog. The first notable exception is apple cobbler - one of my favorite cold-weather desserts. Serve it warm with vanilla ice cream and that's comfort eating all the way. I love desserts that offer a temperature contrast - warm cobbler with cold ice cream. Note I said warm, not hot. As hard as it is sometimes, when you take something out of the oven, you have to let it cool. At least to the point that you don't burn your tongue on the first bite. It's especially important to wait at least 10 minutes (similar to those chocolate chip cookies!) when you're topping a dessert with ice cream. Otherwise your ice cream will melt into a puddle before you can even enjoy the first bite without having your tongue hang out to let the steam escape from that hot spoonful you can't swallow without blistering your esophagus.

Here's my favorite recipe for apple cobbler - straightforward, simple and easy:
4 apples, sliced
1/4 c sugar
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
Vanilla ice cream

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
2. Toss apples, sugar and salt together.
3. Divide equally among 4 individual-sized oven proof bowls.
4. Combine butter and flour with fingertips until mixture is crumbly and has the texture of oatmeal.
5. Add brown sugar, allowing lumps to remain in mixture. Distribute evenly over apples.
6. Bake 30 minutes. Serve warm or cold with vanilla ice cream.

Coconut - love it or hate it

Coconut Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

The funny thing about coconut is people either really love it or really hate it. I don't meet many people who are indifferent to it or can take it or leave it. I'm one of those people who really love it. Love the taste, love the texture, love everything about it. The only thing I don't like is coconut extract. Tastes weird when I bake with it. But coconut itself - ah. My favorite coconut cake recipe is from Mrs. Fields' Great American Desserts. Like the carrot cake recipe, I discovered this one early on and it's so good that I don't try a lot of different recipes just because I think this is the best. I've had people who don't like coconut try this cake and love it. It's moist, it's flavorful and it's just good. Also like with the carrot cake, coconut cake is fabulous with cream cheese frosting. I know there are some recipes that make it with fluffy, boiled icing but that always seems too much like whipped egg whites and why would I want to eat that? I don't make this often because it's so good I would eat too much of it.

Cake
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 cup buttermilk, at room temperature
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut, toasted until golden
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

Frosting
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 pound powdered sugar
1 cup shredded sweetened coconut, toasted until golden

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Butter and lightly flour 3 9-inch cake pans.
2. Put the butter and sugar in a large bowl and cream together until fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes, using an electric mixer on medium speed. Add the vanilla and beat until smooth. Add the egg yolks, 1 at a time, beating for 20 seconds after each addition. Scrape down the bowl.
3. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in thirds, alternating with the buttermilk. Beat for 45 seconds after each addition and begin and end with the dry ingredients. Scrape down the bowl. Add the coconut and beat on low speed.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy using the electric mixer on high speed. Add the cream of tartar, and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold the beaten whites into the batter until no white streaks remain. Divide the batter evenly among the 3 prepared pans and smooth the top of each.
5. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Remove the pans from the oven to wire racks to cool for 10 minutes. Invert the pans onto the racks and let cool to room temperature.
Make the frosting:
6. Put the cream cheese and butter in a large bowl and beat until smooth using the electric mixer on medium speed. Scrape down the bowl. Beat in the powdered sugar, a little at a time, until creamy and smooth. Scrape down the bowl. With a rubber spatula, gently fold in the toasted coconut and combine well.
Assemble the cake:
7. Place a cake layer on a serving plate with strips of wax paper under the edges and spread the top of it with frosting. Add the second layer and frost the top. Place the remaining layer on top. Frost the sides of the cake, then the top. Garnish by pressing the toasted coconut gently over the top and sides. If desired, place large flakes of coconut over the top. Remove the wax paper.

The best way for carrots to be eaten

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Let's talk about carrot cakes. First, contrary to some opinions, carrot cake usually isn't all that healthy. Yeah, it has carrots but it also traditionally has oil and that's why they're so moist and good. But with a really good carrot cake, you won't care that it's not good for you. Second, what constitutes a good carrot cake? To me, it has to be simple - made just with carrots. No nuts, no raisins, no pineapple, no apples, or anything else someone randomly thought up to ruin a good carrot cake. STOP after adding carrots. Don't overspice it either. Cinnamon. That's it. Third, carrot cake must be frosted with cream cheese frosting only. That's the rule. If you don't believe me, try a really good carrot cake made just with carrots, spiced only with a little cinnamon and frosted with cream cheese frosting. It's the best. I always lament that it doesn't count as a vegetable. Once you start adding all those extraneous ingredients, you've lost the essence of carrot cake.

My favorite carrot cake recipe - actually, I haven't tried many because I was fortunate enough to discover this one early on and why mess with perfection? - is from Jim Fobel's Old-Fashioned Baking Book. Normally I don't like recipe books that don't have pictures but this recipe was worth it with the accompanying cream cheese frosting recipe too.

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light or dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup vegetable oil
5 large eggs
3 cups coarsely shredded, peeled raw carrots (6 medium)
1 ½ cups (6 ounces) chopped walnuts

Cream Cheese Frosting

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350˚F. Grease and flour a 13 x 9” baking pan.
2. In a medium-sized bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
3. In a large bowl combine the granulated sugar, brown sugar and butter; beat with an electric mixer until evenly blended. Beat in the oil until smooth. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and then beat until thick and light, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and beat just until blended. With a spoon, stir in the shredded carrots and chopped walnuts; the batter will be thick. Turn the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the top springs back when lightly touched and a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack. When completely cool, generously frost, making swirls over the top. Cover and refrigerate. The frosting will set. To serve, return to room temperature and cut into squares.

Marshmallows....meh

Marshmallow Crunch Brownie Bars - September 12, 2009

This recipe is from the Buttercup Bake Shop, one of my favorite bakeries in Manhattan. They make the BEST red velvet cake. Anyway, this is a brownie layer on the bottom, a marshmallow layer in the middle and the top is peanut butter chocolate with rice crispies. You bake the brownie layer first, cover the top with mini marshmallows and let them melt for a few minutes in the oven, then pour the melted peanut butter chocolate rice krispie layer over it and let it set in the fridge before cutting. I'm not a fan of marshmallows though and the only time I eat them is in rice krispie treats. I don't even like them in s'mores (although I'll eat the graham cracker and chocolate, lol). So why did I make this recipe? Well, sometimes you have to try new things - you never know what you'll end up liking. I haven't tried this one yet so I don't know how they taste. I'm bringing them to a friend's bbq tomorrow before we go watch the Giants game. Hopefully someone will like a chocolate peanut butter marshmallow rice krispie combo.

September 13, 2009 update - I tried a piece of this today. Meh. The bottom and top layers were good but I'm just not a marshmallow fan. Marshmallow may be okay when it's warm and gooey but when it's not warm, it just has the texture of rubber to me. So it was like eating white rubber between two chocolate layers. But that could be just me. Other people who tried it today seemed to like it (some had more than 1 piece and my friend Bryan took the leftovers home - hopefully enough made it to his wife Cheryl). Marshmallow's just not my thing. On the other hand, I liked the rice krispie top with the melted chocolate and peanut butter and that gives me an idea of making something like that for other brownie recipes.

Brownie
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2/3 cup (1 1/3 sticks) plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, divided
¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Topping
1 package (10 ½ ounces) mini marshmallows
1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 ½ cups crispy rice cereal

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
2. Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.
3. In a medium saucepan, melt the chocolate, butter and ¾ cup of the chocolate chips on medium heat. Stir occasionally while melting. Set aside and cool for 5 minutes.
4. In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
5. In a large bowl, place the eggs and whisk thoroughly. Add in the sugar and vanilla. Stir the melted ingredients into the egg mixture, mixing well. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients and mix well.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and even with a spatula. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the pans comes out with moist crumbs.
7. Remove the brownies from the oven and immediately sprinkle the marshmallows over them. Return the pan to the oven for 3 more minutes.
8. While the brownies are baking, place the chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter in a medium saucepan. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until melted. Remove from heat, add the cereal and mix well. Allow this to cool for 3 minutes or so. Spread the mixture evenly over the marshmallow layer. Refrigerate until chilled before cutting.