Wednesday, September 30, 2009

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.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

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.



Friday, September 25, 2009

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.

Monday, September 21, 2009

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.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

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.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

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.