Snickerdoodle Blondies

Snickerdoodle Blondies - made May 17, 2011 found on Sweets for a Saturday #13, from ArcticGardioStudio blog

1st try

I love snickerdoodles and when I saw this recipe for Snickerdoodle Blondies and the picture on Arctic Garden Studio's blog, I immediately bookmarked the post so I could go back to it later and make it.  This is essentially a snickerdoodle in bar cookie form.  It has the same sugar-cinnamon flavor and topping as a snickerdoodle cookie and is just slightly more cakey than the traditional cookie.  But that could just be in the baking.  On the original blog, what sucked me in was how dense and moist the bars looked.  Mine turned out to be more cakey.  It wasn't dry but I think I would've liked it better less baked.  Next time I'm going to cut the baking time.  The dough was also so stiff that it doesn't really smooth out during baking so if you put it in craggy, it'll come out craggy (an obvious lesson I learned).  But it tasted good so another good recipe from the Sweets for a Saturday link party.  Next time Imight add a little more liquid so the dough isn't so stiff, smooth the top better and bake it for less time.  Click title above for the original recipe and/or Arctic Garden Studio's blog.

ETA May 22, 2011 - okay, I really wanted to make these better so I tried another half batch yesterday.  This time I baked in a slightly smaller pan (6" by 9") and only baked for 20 minutes instead of 25.  The taste was the same (good) but I liked the texture much better this time around.  It was more moist, less cakey and more dense.  Still not as good looking a texture as on Nicole's blog but getting there.

2nd try came out much better

 

Devil's Food Cupcakes

Devil's Food Cupcakes - made May 17, 2011 from Mary Engelbreit's Sweet Treats Dessert Cookbook (book #109)

It's coming up on the end of my last week of time off and I'm almost done with my list of "Things To Do Before I Go Back to Work".  As you can tell, on that list, is "Bake as much as I can".  I got a fair amount of baking done on Tuesday and gave away the results to my former coworkers, some friends and my cousin.  It's been great being able to try more new recipes and I've also spent some time going through the cookbooks I have left to bake from and typing up the recipes I want to try from them.

I once went through a Mary Engelbreit phase some years ago and I think I got most, if not all, of her baking-related cookbooks.  All the cookbooks have nice layouts with pretty pictures and easy to follow recipes, not to mention being set against a backdrop of cheery Mary Engelbreit patterns.  So naturally I got sucked in (it doesn't take much).  I'm past the Mary Engelbreit phase now but surprisingly I've found some good recipes in her cookbooks.

I tried this recipe for devil's food cupcakes partly to use up some buttermilk and partly because I have yet to find a memorable devil's food cake recipe that I like.  And cupcakes can be the bane of my baking existence.  In my abhorrence of dry cupcakes, I tend to underbake them.  While they're not dry, underbaked cupcakes tend to be more dense than they should be and sometimes don't taste right.  So I haven't cracked the cupcake secret yet.  But I keep trying.  Someday I'll get it right. 

And this cupcake recipe is a good start.  The cupcakes were a nice deep chocolate thanks to Pernigotti cocoa and the texture was just right - cakey, fluffy, moist.  For once I think I took them out at the right time, although I was getting twitchy at the end and almost took them out too soon again. Even the frosting was good, much better than the one from the Chocolate Velvet Cakes recipe.  I only used a generous 2 cups powdered sugar, not 3 full cups, and it turned out fine.  Just add enough milk until it's the consistency you want for spreading.

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Pernigotti and it was perfect)

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 ½ cups sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups buttermilk

Easy Buttercream Frosting

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3 cups confectioners’ sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

Food coloring (optional)

Sprinkles, mini M&Ms, colored sugar, etc, for decorating

1.      Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.  Line 20 muffin cups with foil liners.

2.     In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.

3.     In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in the vanilla.  On low speed, add the flour mixture alternating with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.  Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each one about two-thirds full.

4.     Bake the cupcakes for 17 to 19 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean.  Let cool completely in the pans on wire racks.

5.     To make the frosting: In a large bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer until very soft and light, about 3 minutes.  Add the remaining ingredients and beat until smooth and fluffy.  Use immediately or cover and refrigerate until needed.

6.     If desired, divide the frosting among several bowls and tint it different colors with food coloring; leave one bowl of frosting white.  Ice the cupcakes generously with the frosting.  Before the frosting has set, sprinkle the decorations on top.

Three-Layer Lemon Bars

Three-Layer Lemon Bars - made May 17, 2011 from My Five Men blog, found on Sweets for a Saturday #16

It's time to try another recipe that I saw from Sweets for a Saturday.  I have a list a mile long of recipes I see linked up there every Saturday that I want to try but given I've got my own baking books to go through, I have to limit myself to trying a few here and there.  In the meantime, I bookmark the links, promising myself that I'll go back "someday" to try out all these wonderful-looking concoctions.

I met some friends for lunch and dinner on Wednesday and with both groups, my lemon bars have been a hit in the past.  This time around, I thought I'd try something slightly different for them and use this recipe that Betsy posted.  The picture just looked so good.  The basic ingredients are almost the same as in my recipe but mine doesn't have the glaze on top.  What could it hurt?

The main thing I changed from Betsy's posted recipe (click on the title at the top to go to the original recipe on her blog) was I baked the crust at 325 degrees instead of 300.  At 300 degrees, in the first 10 minutes of baking the crust, it seemed like the butter in the crust was only melting, not baking so I raised the oven temp slightly. During the baking with the filling, I lowered it to 315 for the first 20 minutes then back down to 300 for the last 20.  These got a little crusty and brown on top so it might've been better to stick with 300 degrees the whole way once the filling was added.  My glaze isn't showing up as white as Betsy's and that could be because I applied the glaze only a couple of minutes after I took the lemon bars out and they melted into the top.  If you look closely, you can still see the glaze but I think it would look better had they remained more uniformly white.  Next time I would let the bars cool to lukewarm then apply the glaze.

Overall, I really liked the taste of these lemon bars.  The glaze was a sweet offset to the tartness of the lemon filling and I actually liked the crust on top that was enhanced by the glaze to provide a bit of a texture contrast to the lemon filling.  The glaze was great - I like it better than sprinkling powdered sugar on top like most lemon bars have.  The bottom crust could've been baked a bit more before the filling was added so I'm posting how I would adapt this recipe below.  Otherwise this had great flavor.  It probably also helped that my lemons were from my aunt's tree so they were homegrown.  I'm looking forward to the day I can use my own lemons for this recipe.

In any case, I'm very glad I tried this recipe.  This is exactly why I keep trying out new recipes even for desserts I already have perfectly good recipes for.  You never know when you might discover something even better and come up with a new favorite. I want to make this recipe again with my modifications to see if it really is going to usurp my old lemon bar recipe.  I suspect it might.

Crust

½ cup powdered sugar

2 cups flour

2 sticks (1 cup) cold butter

Filling

4 eggs

4 tablespoons flour

2 cups sugar

Zest from 2 lemons

4 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon lemon extract

Glaze

2/3 cup powdered sugar

Lemon juice

1.     To make the crust: Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Place the crust ingredients in a food processor and pulse until combined.  Press into greased 9 x 13” baking pan lined with foil.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, until edges are golden brown.

2.      To make the filling: Whisk filling ingredients together and carefully pour over hot crust in an even layer.

3.      Bake 40-45 minutes until nicely brown and knife comes out clean when inserted in the center.

4.      To make the glaze: whisk glaze ingredients together.  It should be thin enough to drizzle.  Let lemon bars cool to just a bit warmer than lukewarm.  Spread over bars and let set.  Cool completely before cutting.

Chocolate Chunk Coconut Macadamia Cookies

Chocolate Chunk Coconut Macadamia Cookies - baked May 17, 2011 from The Buttercup Bake Shop  Cookbook by Jennifer Appel (book #108)

The last time I was in New York City, I went to every bake shop in Manhattan that I could conceivably walk to - and believe me, I can walk a lot when there are baked goods involved.  I'd heard about the Magnolia Bakery and its sister bakery, the Buttercup Bake Shop, and visited both.  At Buttercup, the best thing I ever ate was a slice of their red velvet cake.  When I came back from my trip, I bought several of their baking books which had been published by that time.  This was one of them.  I normally make coconut macadamia cookies as they're a family favorite but I decided to try the chocolate version of them with this recipe.  As I think of heading back to work, I also want to stockpile some cookie doughs to have ready in the freezer that I can bake off whenever I need them.  Some people advocate baking cookies and freezing them until needed but I prefer to freeze the cookie dough (already portioned into dough balls) and bake them off when I need them.  A freshly baked cookie trumps a freshly thawed cookie any time.

This recipe is fairly standard and easy to put together.  I did what I almost always do with cookies - I make the dough ahead of time, portion them into dough balls and put them in the freezer.  Then I bake them at least a day later, right before I need them.  This was part of a baking drop off at my old company so I baked them the same morning I delivered them.  I think they were barely cool before I piled them on a plate and brought them over.  As with all chocolate cookies, I actually timed this one in the oven since it's hard to tell when chocolate cookies are done since you can't go by how "brown" the edges look.  And there's nothing worse than overbaked, dry chocolate cookies.  I like to underbake mine just slightly so when they cool, they're nice and fudgy.  The quality of your cocoa matters since this is where the chocolate flavor comes from.  I use Pernigotti from Williams Sonoma but any high-quality cocoa should do.

I like this cookie - the richness of the chocolate is offset by the sweetness and chewiness from the coconut and complemented by the macadamia nuts.  Wonder of wonders, I didn't even mind the nuts in these cookies and you know I hardly ever like nuts in my cookies.  Macadamia nuts are the rare exception though as long as the cookie is thick and chewy or fudgy.  I don't think I would feel the same if this had been made with almonds or pecans (and I love those too - just not in cookies)

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups (2 2/3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted

2 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ to 2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks

1 cup coarsely chopped macadamia nuts, unsalted

1 cup sweetened, shredded coconut

1.      Preheat oven to 350˚F.

2.     In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

3.     In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugars until smooth, about 3 minutes.  Add the eggs and mix well.  Add the chocolate, milk, and vanilla and incorporate thoroughly.  Add the dry ingredients and beat well.  Stir in the chocolate chunks, nuts and coconut.

4.     Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving several inches between for expansion.  Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.  Cool the cookies on the sheets for 1 minute, then remove to a rack to cool completely.

Makes 3 to 4 dozen cookies

Chocolate Velvet Cakes

Chocolate Velvet Cakes - made May 16, 2011 from Petite Sweets by Beatrice Ojakangas (book #107)

I think these were meant to be the same as red velvet cakes but without the red food coloring.  The basic ingredients are the same as in a red velvet, including the cocoa powder for the chocolate flavor and the buttermilk.  The white vinegar in addition to the buttermilk is a bit unusual since typically, the buttermilk has enough tang without adding more acidity.  Fortunately, that's offset by the baking soda.

I like the concept of little bite-sized desserts and am always on the lookout for stuff to serve at dessert buffet parties.  You can enjoy one little dessert and move on to the next offering for something different.  Or, if you like it, you can have another one without doing too much caloric damage.  Just don't have 20.  I'm a believer in portion control and I'm also a believer in having a little of the real thing rather than a larger portion of a low-cal, low-fat version (unless you actually like that stuff - I usually don't).

The recipe says this makes 24 mini muffin size cupcakes.  In my 24-mini-muffin pan, I filled the cavities almost to the top and still had enough batter left over for a small ramekin.  Depending on the size of your mini muffin pan, you may get slightly more than 24 mini cupcakes.  Don't overfill these or you'll end up with muffin tops spilling over and you don't want that since these are little cupcakes, not little muffins.  They're also harder to get out of the pan if the tops overflow since the cakes are more fragile than muffins.

I really liked these mini cakes.  They weren't too chocolatey and their texture was light and moist at the same time.  They're perfect as a bite-size since they're also a little fragile.  I think if they were a larger size, they'd fall apart more easily.  They were so good that you can easily serve them without frosting as well.  I wasn't overly impressed with the frosting on this one but that could've been my fault.  The flour & milk mixture was supposed to be chilled.  I put it in the refrigerator to cool but I think I added it to the butter mixture too soon and the butter got a little warm and tried to separate.  I put the whole thing back in the fridge after I mixed it in and beat it again once it really was chilled.  I also added almost half a cup more powdered sugar in an attempt to get it to bind better.  But to no avail - the frosting still looked like it was going to melt even though it was literally chilled.  Definitely not a smooth frosting.  But the mini cupcakes were good so if you have a vanilla frosting you like better, use that instead.

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

¾ cup sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ cup buttermilk

1 ½ teaspoons white vinegar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Vanilla Frosting

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

½ cup milk

1 cup powdered sugar

8 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1.      Preheat oven to 350⁰F.  Coat 24 miniature muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray or line with miniature paper liners.

2.      Cream butter and add the sugar; beat until light and fluffy.  Beat in the egg and mix in the cocoa.  In a small bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking soda.  In a 1-cup measure, mix the buttermilk, vinegar and vanilla.

3.      Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the buttermilk mixture.  Beat until batter is smooth and fluffy.  Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, dividing equally.  The batter will come nearly to the top of each cup.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until cakes feel firm when touched in the center.  Remove from the oven and cool.

4.      Make the frosting: In a small saucepan, combine the flour and milk.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.  Cover and chill.  In a medium-sized bowl, beat the sugar, butter and vanilla until thick and light.  Add the chilled flour mixture to the creamed mixture and blend until smooth.

5.      Frost each cooled cake and garnish with nuts or mini chocolate chips or sprinkles if desired.

Mocha Cream Cheese Brownies

Mocha Cream Cheese Brownies - made May 16, 2011 from The Fearless Baker by Emily Luchetti

I'm cranking through my to-do list this week to get ready to go back to work next week.  Took my car in for servicing, got a car wash (and promptly got rained on on my way home - awesome), got the batteries in my watches replaced (they both decided to die at the same time - further awesomeness), and am hitting the baking.  You'd think I'd focus solely on the baking books I have in order to further my baking challenge instead of getting distracted by whatever new cookbooks I can check out at the library.  But like any shiny new object, this newly released cookbook by Emily Luchetti caught my eye and I couldn't resist checking it out and thumbing through it.  I earmarked a few recipes to copy and bake in the future.  For now, I'm going with this brownie recipe as something straightforward to make and a good addition to the goodie bags I'm making for friends this week.

Both the brownie batter and the cream cheese batter are almost equal in amount so you can conceivably make this as a two-layer brownie.  But I followed instructions and swirled the two batters instead although I mostly swirled the top layer and kept the bottom brownie layer mostly intact.  This didn't have the extraneous addition of nuts or even chocolate chips and I liked the idea of just a straight brownie.  Since I'm not a big cream cheese fan, I also liked flavoring the cream cheese batter with coffee.  I used espresso powder instead of instant coffee granules and I dissolved them in the vanilla extract first before adding to the cream cheese batter.  It just blends better in the batter that way and you don't have to worry about the granules getting concentrated in one part of the batter or not melting appropriately.  I ended up baking mine for 40 minutes (every oven is different) - the cream cheese part hadn't quite set but the brownie part was done.

Because the cream cheese batter is equally predominant, this is not a brownie you want to serve warm as it'll be too gooey.  Let it cool to room temperature and even chill it if you want to give it more of a cheesecake texture.  I love the chocolate part of this brownie and didn't mind the cream cheese part - the mocha flavoring definitely helps the cream cheese go down easy.  But next time I'd probably do a better job of swirling both batters together so there's not such a huge swath of cream cheese all at once in any given piece.  If you like cheesecake, swirl as little as you please.  If you don't, swirl away.  As always, use the best quality chocolate you can (I used Lindt) as that'll make a big difference in how these taste.

Chocolate layer

9 ounces dark chocolate (58 to 62% cacao), chopped or broken into 1-inch pieces

10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Large pinch of kosher salt

Coffee-Cream Cheese Layer

2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

½ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons instant coffee granules

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1.       Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Grease the bottom and sides of a 9 x 9-inch square baking pan with nonstick cooking spray or butter.

2.       Chocolate layer: Melt the chocolate and butter in the top half of a double boiler.  Stir and scrape the side of the saucepan occasionally with a rubber spatula until the chocolate is smooth and evenly melted.  Set aside and let cool to room temperature.

3.       In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until smooth.  Stir in the melted chocolate, then the flour and salt and mix until well blended.  Turn the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly with the spatula.

4.       Coffee-Cream Cheese Layer: In another bowl, mix the cream cheese with the sugar until smooth.  Add the eggs and stir until combined.  Scrape down the side of the bowl with the rubber spatula.  Stir in the instant coffee and vanilla until everything is well blended.

5.       Using a rubber spatula, spread the cream cheese mixture on top of the chocolate layer, then run a table knife through the cream cheese to swirl it into large white ribbons throughout the brown batter.

6.       Bake, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the brownie comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

7.       Let cool to room temperature, then cut into 16 (2-inch) or 9 (3-inch) squares.

Also linked to:

 

Espresso Coffee Cake

Espresso Coffee Cake - made May 14, 2011 from Caprial's Desserts by Caprial Pence (book #106)

In case you've ever wondered why I seem to have so much time to bake and blog about what I'm baking and thought, "Doesn't this woman ever work??", wonder no more.  I've been taking an extended sabbatical since I left my job late last year.  Besides traveling, walking literally miles and miles, exercising, baking, gardening and reading everything I can get my hands on from my local library, I have been looking for a job...sort of.  Okay, I haven't been looking that hard really since I was in no hurry to go back to work and was fully prepared to enjoy all of 2011 at my leisure.  But sometimes you just find the right opportunity or it finds you.  Or both.  I just accepted a job offer last Friday and will be heading back to work in a little over a week.  It's been an awesome 6 months but alas, I can't retire quite yet so it's back to work I go.

In addition to getting all the normal pesky errands and chores taken care of (take in the car for service, get some pants tailored, get the batteries replaced in my watch, weed the garden....again, declutter and do a Goodwill dropoff, laundry, cleaning, yada yada) and fun stuff of cramming in dinners and lunches with friends, I have 8 days of madly baking left!  Not that I won't be baking for my new office and new coworkers once I start working again but I won't have the time I do now to experiment in my kitchen and further my baking challenge.  So it's game on this week.  I'll have to pace my postings or else I'll end up posting 2-3 times a day for a week then nothing for the first few weeks at work.  But let's see how much I can bake this week.  I've already got lunches and dinners planned with friends that will entail goodie bags and I've given my former coworkers a heads up that I'll be doing my last baking drop off to them next week.  Then I switch allegiance to the new company :).

First in the line up is Espresso Coffee Cake.  I only made a half recipe and baked it in an 8 x 8" pan. Normally when you think of coffee cake, you think of streusel on top of a vanilla butter cake.  This is a little different in that it doesn't have streusel but it does have an espresso glaze atop an espresso and vanilla cake.  As you can tell from the picture, it rose up and cracked straight down the middle so the glaze rushed into that space.  Aside from that though, this was pretty good cake.  It had the right texture and was moist.  The glaze wasn't too thick which, as a non-frosting person, I like.  Surprisingly the espresso taste wasn't that strong, considering how much espresso is actually in it.  I don't like or drink coffee but I like coffee-flavored baked goods so this was just right for me.

Cake

1 ½ cups unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups sour cream

¼ cup instant espresso powder

2 tablespoons hot water

Espresso Glaze

1 tablespoon instant espresso powder

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups powdered sugar

3 tablespoons milk

1.     Preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Grease a 9 x 13” pan; set aside.

2.     To prepare the cake, place the butter and sugar in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl often until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition, followed by the vanilla.  Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  Add about half of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add about half of the sour cream and mix well.  Add the remaining dry ingredients followed by the remaining sour cream, scraping down the sides of the bowl and mixing well after each addition.  Combine the instant espresso powder and hot water in a medium bowl, add about a third of the batter, and mix well.  Spread about half of the plain batter in the prepared pan.  Top with the espresso batter, and then cover with the remaining plain batter.  Bake until the cake slowly springs back when touched lightly in the center, about 45 minutes.  Let cool for 5 minutes before glazing.

3.     To prepare the glaze, dissolve the instant espresso powder in the vanilla extract.  Place the powdered sugar in a bowl, add the espresso mixture and the milk, and mix well.  (If it’s too thick, add a bit more milk.)  Pour the glaze over the cake and spread it out to the edges.  Serve warm.