Brownies!

Brownies are a busy baker's best friend. They can be mixed in one bowl, poured into a pan and baked in no time at all. Given both the hours I work and the amount of time I have to bake, brownies are a crucial part of my baking therapy. You can fit them in almost any time.

Unlike many other sweets that require being exact in ingredients, brownies are a little more forgiving about "add in" ingredients. I've been known to add chocolate liqueur in lieu of or in addition to vanilla as well as chocolate extract, Kahlua, etc. You can also dress up a plain brownie with chopped up candy bars, chunks of chocolate, M&Ms, Rolos, Snickers - you name it, it can probably be added. Don't go wild though as the beauty of the brownie is its simplicity and you don't want to lose its richness by adding too much other stuff. I added plain M&Ms to this recipe. Peanut M&Ms would've been too big and the softness of the texture of these brownies would've been overwhelmed by anything bigger than the plain M&Ms.

Most brownie recipes call for nuts to be added to the batter. As previously stated, I am diametrically opposed to nuts in my brownies and other baked goods. If they're layered on top, they might be okay but inside the batter? That's just wrong. Brownies tend to have a higher proportion of chocolate so it's crucial to use good quality chocolate. Your brownies are only as good as the ingredients you put in.

The most common mistake people make with brownies is they bake them too long. They wait until the toothpick comes out "clean". No, no, no. Did I mention "no"? By the time your toothpick comes out clean, your brownie is likely overbaked and possibly dry. Since most brownies have a high proportion of chocolate compared to the rest of the ingredients, it's okay to err on the side of underbaking them. The chocolate will "set" as it cools. Some people like their brownies fudgy, others like them cakey. I belong in the fudgy camp. If I wanted cakey brownies, I'd make a chocolate cake. Some people mistake my brownies for fudge. I'm okay with that. There's a fine line between the two anyway.

Lots of people like the brownie edges and they even make an Edge pan for those who only like the edges http://www.amazon.com/Bakers-Edge-Nonstick-Brownie-Pan/dp/B000MMK448/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1254363324&sr=8-1
That would NOT be for me. I like the middles. They're generally more moist and chocolatey. I give the edges to other people.

I tried a new recipe last night - Bittersweet Brownies from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours. It's a fantastic book and I highly recommend it for even the most novice bakers. So far all the recipes I've tried from it have turned out pretty well. The original recipe called for the brownies to be thin and baked in a 9 x 13 pan. I'm almost as opposed to thin brownies as I am to nuts in brownies. Thin brownies? Are you kidding? Thin should only be applied to my weight loss goals. Thin doesn't belong with brownies. I compensated by baking them in a smaller pan so, while they weren't really thick, at least they weren't thin. Some brownies are so rich that you probably don't want them too thick. In that case, just cut them smaller. But don't make them thin.

I brought these into work today for a few meetings and I passed out the leftovers amongst some of my coworker friends. Ran into one of them, Rick, after I'd passed out the last brownie and I had to confess they were gone. That earned me a searing look and the declaration from Rick of "You're dead to me!" LOL. Guess Rick likes brownies too. Fortunately for him, Albie saved the day and shared one of the ones I had given her. Maybe next time, Rick, I'll bring you your own. Maybe.

Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies

I am not a huge fan of peanut butter - at least not by itself. Never had a peanut butter & jelly sandwich in my life (don't even get me started on not liking jelly). However, I don't mind peanut butter combined with other flavors, especially chocolate. Or peanut butter baked into cakes, brownies or cookies. Just don't like the stuff straight out of the jar.

While I like peanut butter cookies for the most part, I don't like the traditional flat peanut butter cookie that's a bit crisp. Crisp in a cookie often translates into "dry". I like my cookies rounded, thick and moist. Crisp also often signifies the use of shortening in a recipe and I much prefer butter.

I like this recipe for Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies because it holds its shape well and is a nice combination of peanut butter and chocolate. It's moist, fudgy and not too overwhelmingly peanut butter-y. Watch the baking time on this one. It bakes for 10 minutes in my oven. When in doubt, err on the side of underbaking rather than overbaking. This is from Nancy Baggett's All-American Cookie Book.

Peanut Butter Fudge Cookies

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, broken up or coarsely chopped
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons smooth peanut butter
1 ½ cups packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened American-style cocoa powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup (6 ounces) milk chocolate morsels, finely chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Grease several baking sheets or coat with nonstick spray.
2. In a small, microwave-safe bowl, microwave the unsweetened chocolate on 50% power for 1 minute. Stir well. Continue microwaving on 50% power, stirring at 30-second intervals. Stop microwaving before the chocolate completely melts and let the residual heat finish the job. (Alternatively, in a small, heavy saucepan, melt the chocolate over lowest heat, stirring frequently; be very careful not to burn. Immediately remove from the heat.)
3. In a medium bowl, thoroughly stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, with an electric mixer on low, then medium, speed, beat together the melted chocolate, peanut butter, brown sugar, sugar, and cocoa powder until very well blended. Add the butter and beat until very well blended and smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy and well blended, about 2 minutes. Beat or stir in the flour mixture, then the chocolate morsels, just until evenly incorporated. Refrigerate the dough for 15 minutes, or until it firms up slightly.
4. Divide the dough into quarters, forming each into a flat disk. Divide each portion into quarters, then eighths. Shape the portions into balls with lightly greased hands. Place on the baking sheets, spacing about 2 ½ inches apart. Lightly oil the tines of a fork. Using the fork tines, firmly press down each ball horizontally and then vertically until the ball is about ½” thick.
5. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, in the upper third of the oven for 8 to 11 minutes, or until not quite firm when pressed in the centers; be careful not to overbake. Transfer the sheet to a wire rack and let stand until the cookies firm up slightly, 1 to 2 minutes. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to wire racks. Let stand until completely cooled.

Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week or freeze for up to 1 ½ months.

Lemon Cream-Filled Cookies

These are nice, simple cookies, perfect for serving at a tea or brunch. They take a little more time than drop cookies but are fairly straightforward and simple to make. My niece Lauren made these for my dad's birthday party last weekend, using my recipe below. She made the dough herself, rolled out the dough, cut out the shapes, baked them, cooled them, made the filling and she and Shyla put them together.

Usually I don't have the time to make sandwich cookies. The chilling, rolling out, baking, cooling and sandwiching together are great for a weekend project but not so much during the week when I get home late from work. The thing with any kind of sandwich cookies is the importance of uniformity. The dough has to be rolled out to just the right thickness. Too thick and you'll get a bulky cookie when you sandwich the halves together. Too thin and they'll break apart easily, not to mention they brown too fast when you bake them. You can't have a thin half and a thick half either - looks weird. Plus each one has to be the same size and shape in order to put together neatly. If you like the homey touch, then it doesn't really matter if the cookie halves are mismatched. But (you guessed it), I'm a bit anal about stuff like that so I prefer to use a cookie cutter to get uniform shapes and sizes for my sandwich cookies.

The filling is important too. If it's too liquidy, the filling will run out the sides of the sandwich cookie or leak out when you bite into it, making a mess. If it's too hard, it ruins the texture contrast with the cookie halves or won't be soft enough to hold the two sandwich halves together.

This recipe is from a Mrs. Fields cookie book. You can use any size and shape cookie cutter to cut the cookies. I like to use small ones for more dainty-looking cookies. Normally I use a scallop-shaped cookie cutter to make these prettier but I had Lauren use a plain circle this time around just to keep things simple.

Cookies
¾ cup salted butter, softened
½ cup confectioners’ sugar
2 teaspoons pure lemon extract
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch

Filling
¼ cup salted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 tablespoon heavy cream
juice of 1 freshly squeezed lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
grated zest of 1 lemon (2-3 teaspoons)

To make the cookie dough
1. In a medium bowl, cream butter with an electric mixer set at medium speed. Add sugar, and beat until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
2. Add lemon extract, and beat until light and fluffy. Then add flour and cornstarch; blend at low speed until thoroughly combined.
3. Gather dough into 2 balls of equal size and flatten into disks. Wrap the disks tightly in plastic wrap or a plastic bag. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
To make the filling:
4. In a small bowl, beat butter with mixer until fluffy. Gradually add sugar while continuing to beat. Add cream, lemon juice and lemon zest. Mix until thoroughly blended and set aside. To harden filling quickly, refrigerate for 15-20 minutes.
5. At this point, preheat oven to 325˚F.
6. Using a floured rolling pin, roll the chilled cookie dough on a floured board to a ¼” thickness. Cut circles of dough on ungreased cookie sheets, ½” apart. Continue rolling out and cutting dough scraps until all dough is used.
7. Bake for 15-17 minutes, or until edges begin to brown. Immediately transfer cookies with a spatula to a cool, flat surface.
8. When cookies are completely cool, spread a cookie with 1 teaspoon of the lemon cream. Place another cookie on top of the filling to make a sandwich. Complete entire batch.

Pancit Palabok - a Filipino noodle dish

My mom is an awesome cook – one of those people who don’t use a recipe and just cook by taste. For as long as I can remember, she was always cooking, seemingly effortlessly. She did NOT pass those abilities onto me. I can bake but I can’t cook. Trust me, there’s a difference. The few times I’ve attempted “real cooking” – well, let’s just say my worst baking failures are probably still better than my best cooking efforts.

Cooking is more of an art and there’s much more room for ad hoc creativity and going by how something tastes. Baking is more of a science and is more exact in its ingredients and instructions. Most chefs, amateur and professional, prefer one over the other and are better at one over the other, even if they can do both. I’m on the baking side and always will be. I can create all sorts of desserts and pastries but can barely boil water for the pasta to go with the canned jar of sauce from the grocery store. Those frozen dinners you can microwave are a staple in my freezer.

This is a picture of a traditional Filipino dish called Pancit Palabok – it’s a noodle dish with sauce, hard-boiled eggs, shrimp, a little chicken, green onions and a bunch of other “stuff” (says the non-cook). I’ve tried to get my mom to write down the recipe for the tastebook I’m creating for my nieces but while she’s made this dish for years and can probably make it in her sleep, she doesn’t have a recipe for it. She just knows how to make it. That’s a cook. Whereas I have reams of dessert cookbooks and pore over recipes, making notes, refining them and writing them out to document them. That’s a baker or a pastry chef. A world of difference. Fortunately for my nieces, my sister, Corin, inherited Mom’s cooking genes so she can make the traditional Filipino food. Although she doesn’t really use recipes either. Argh.

Another Red Velvet Cake

Red Velvet Cake - More from Magnolia Bakery cookbook - September 19, 2009

My nieces came up for the weekend for my dad’s 70th birthday party. In what’s now becoming our tradition, they stay with me for a night and the rest of the time, they spend at my parents’ house. On “my” night, we get takeout from Krung Thai, my favorite Thai restaurant, and I make dessert. This night’s dessert was red velvet cake. I tried the recipe from the More From Magnolia Bakery cookbook. It turned out pretty well but I confess I like Diane’s recipe better. I also made the Creamy Vanilla Frosting that was in the Magnolia cookbook and it was good but I still prefer cream cheese frosting with red velvet cake. Overall, I’m not a big fan of frosting. Most frostings and icings are too sweet and I’m more about the cake than the frosting. I’d rather have just a tiny bit of frosting, only enough to hold the cake layers together. Some of my friends are the opposite and would rather have a ton of frosting than cake (shudder). I need to hang out more with those people because we’d never let a slice of cake go to waste – I can eat the cake and they can eat the frosting.

I don’t make layer cakes that often because it’s time consuming – not so much the mixing and baking part but the waiting for the cake layers to cool enough to frost. You always want cake layers to be completely cool or else your frosting will melt. I do have some cake recipes where you’re supposed to let the frosting melt over the warm cake – yum. It’s also almost inevitable that the outer edges of the cake layers are a tad dry in the time it took to get the center baked enough to take out. I tend to underbake my cakes just a trifle to avoid this but then sometimes the center comes out gummy. I know people recommend the Magi-Cake strips but they’ve only been marginally successful to me and sometimes not really worth the bother. But layer cakes do make a nice presentation and are very photogenic.

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.