Chocolate Truffles

Chocolate Truffles - made February 11, 2014 from The Pioneer Woman

I've mentioned before that I've started recording episodes of The Pioneer Woman to watch whenever I have time. Usually it's when I'm working out in the morning. I like to watch food shows to remind me why I'm working out in the first place. The more I want to eat empty calories, the more I give to my workout. It's my way of maintaining balance in my world.

I recently watched the chocolate episode where Ree makes up chocolate treats then Ladd and the kids deliver them to their friends in town. One of the treats she makes is these chocolate truffles. This isn't red velvet, heart-shaped or pink or red but chocolate is a big component of Valentine's Day so I had to make these for Valentine week. This is the easy cheater's version because it just involves melting two kinds of chocolate with a can of sweetened condensed milk and adding vanilla. None of that boiling cream and pouring over chopped chocolate to make the traditional truffle filling. I also knew the sweetened condensed milk would make for a smooth truffle center. Sold.

The other advantage to this recipe is you can make the truffle mixture one night, chill it overnight then finish it off the next day. Which is what I did because I didn't have a weeknight where I had time to do everything from start to finish in the same night. I got home late from work the night I made the filling but it took only a few minutes to melt the chocolates with the sweetened condensed milk, beat in the vanilla, cover and place in the fridge to chill. These were meant to be dark chocolate truffles but the bittersweet chocolate I was using was pretty high end and I knew that would be really dark so I added a little over 4 ounces of milk chocolate as part of the semisweet chocolate portion to lighten it up a little.

After chilling overnight, the mixture was solid rock so I did have to let it sit out a bit....okay, I cheated and microwaved it for 10 seconds to soften it enough for me to scoop out the truffles. I would recommend chilling these initially only until the mixture is firm enough to scoop and hold its shape so you don't have to do the microwave thing. Then you can chill them further once they're scooped out. I was originally going to enrobe them all in the milk chocolate and leave them as is but I wasn't happy with how the plain ones looked (not as smooth) so I enrobed them in a thin coating then rolled them in chopped toasted almonds while the coating was still soft so the nuts adhered easily. They turned out much better this way and I enjoyed the texture contrast with the almonds plus it cut the richness of the filling. The truffle center was more like fudge than a truly creamy ganache truffle center but it was still pretty good. For the easy version of truffles, I recommend going with this one.

8 ounces high quality semisweet chocolate (I used a mix of milk chocolate and semisweet)
8 ounces high quality bittersweet chocolate
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
8 ounces milk chocolate candy melts
Sea salt for garnish or chopped toasted almonds, optional

1. Heat chocolates and sweetened condensed milk in a double boiler over medium low heat until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in vanilla to combine.
2. Remove from heat, cover and refrigerate for 2 hours (I chilled mine overnight). Or, to make it easier, chill only for 15-20 minutes, just long enough for the mixture to become firm enough to hold its shape when scooped out. When they've been scooped, you can chill further if desired. 
3. Once chilled and rolled into small balls, dip in melted milk chocolate coating, enrobing completely. Lay on wax paper and sprinkle with sea salt or roll in chopped toasted nuts while chocolate coating is still soft. Let cool until chocolate coating has set.

Red Velvet Sugar Cookie Bars

Red Velvet Sugar Cookie Bars - made February 8, 2014 from The Recipe Critic

Get that bottle of red food coloring back out for this recipe. It's red velvet time again. While I do like red velvet in most forms, I'm a little picky on which type of red velvet recipes to try. There are some that barely contain any chocolate and have more red food coloring than cocoa. I've learned to pass on those because those are barely chocolate flavored and seem more like food dyed red than real red velvet. A good red velvet should actually have a chocolate taste. If it doesn't, it's just not good red velvet (duh). This is where I think red velvet gets a bad rap because anything can be colored red and called red velvet but if it's not going to taste like chocolate, what's the point?

So what's my criteria for what could potentially be good red velvet? For one thing, depending on the proportion of the other ingredients, it should have a reasonable amount of cocoa. By reasonable, I don't mean 2 teaspoons for an entire 9 x 13 cake. The minimum I look for is 1/4 cup and even then, I make sure to use a good dark cocoa for maximum chocolate flavor.

I'm not usually big on sugar cookie bars but I was captivated by the photos on pinterest that someone had pinned from The Recipe Critic. And one picture is usually all it takes to get me to pin something and go back to it later to try. This is super easy to make and came out pretty well. You almost have to tell people it's a sugar cookie bar because at first glance it'll look like a dry brownie or a dense cake and might be wrongly judged as such. It's not "fudgy" like a brownie but it's moist for a bar cookie and a sugar cookie. I really liked this bar cookie for its taste and texture. Just try not to think of how much red dye #5 is in it and you'll be fine.

To make it even fancier for Valentine's Day, you can also sprinkle it with red and/or pink sprinkles or, like The Recipe Critic, make it more elegantly classy with white sugar pearls (check out how hers look by clicking on the recipe title above). I left mine unadorned because I was taking it to work and figured, as adults, my coworkers didn't need sprinkles on their baked goods. Plus, with the cream cheese frosting, I didn't know how long it would be before the colored sugar crystals melted into the frosting and became more like a canvas of paints running together than sugar sprinkles glittering on top of the bar cookie. Not that my coworkers seemed to have minded one way or the other since the 9 x 13 pan's worth of bar cookies disappeared before the end of the morning - always a good sign.

3⅓ cups flour

¼ cup unsweet­ened cocoa
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon bak­ing pow­der
1 cup butter, softened
1½ cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons (one 1-ounce bottle) red food coloring

Cream Cheese Frosting
2 8 Oz cream cheese, softened
½ cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9×13 inch pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
3. In a mixing bowl, cream together 1 cup butter softened and sugar until light and creamy. About 2-3 minutes. Beat in the eggs, vanilla, and food coloring until combined.
4. Add the flour mixture until a soft dough forms. Press into the bottom of the 9×13 inch pan. Bake for about 20 minutes until the edges start to pull away from the sides and a toothpick entered into the center comes out clean. Allow to completely cool before frosting.
5. To make the cream cheese frosting, Beat together the cream cheese and butter. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla. Beat together until smooth. Frost the top of the bars. Cut into squares and serve.

Restaurant Review: Buca di Beppo

Buca di Beppo - dinner on January 25, 2014

When we were down in Southern California visiting my cousin(s) a few weeks ago, we had dinner at a Buca di Beppo: me, my parents, my sister, my cousin, her husband and their two kids. Buca di Beppo is a chain of family-style Italian restaurants. If you've ever been to one, you know it's going to be the last place to go for a romantic dinner for two so skip it for your Valentine's Day dinner. Furthermore, you never want to go with a group of people fewer than 6. Even more is better.

That would be because Buca di Beppo is almost always crowded, certainly noisy and most of all, they serve a ton of food. Each dish is meant to be shared family style. If there are only two of you, prepare to get only one entree to share and even then, you'll probably end up with leftovers to take home. It's much better to go with a crowd so you can get a variety of dishes to split. "Regular"-size entrees start at around $20 but they typically serve 3-4 or more people so, with a large group, the per person cost can be pretty reasonable. But the key is to go with a bunch of people. With just 6 adults and 2 small children, we were pushing the limit by getting the garlic bread appetizer and 3 entrees. Even then we still ended up with leftovers.

Garlic Bread appetizer

I don't know that I would call it gourmet Italian food but it's generally pretty good. If you're an Italian food snob and prefer your pasta from Italy and tomatoes harvested from vineyards in Tuscany, this may not be the place for you. If you're coming with a large party and want "safe" dishes that can appeal to a variety of palates, Buca is a good option. I first discovered it in business school when my friends and I traveled in large packs before b-school events and the one in Palo Alto could easily accommodate groups of our size. With so many options to choose from, it was easy to let those who had a strong preference order and the rest of us ate whatever was put in front of us.

Prosciutto-Stuffed Chicken

For this family visit, we mixed it up a bit with the Prosciutto-Stuffed Chicken (really good), Shrimp Florentine (tasty) and my comfort food of choice, spaghetti and meatballs. The meatballs were huge so this was a fitting dish for a carnivore (that would be me) as well as a carb-lover (also me).

Shrimp Florentine

And you all know me well enough to know I usually like to get dessert when I eat out but Buca di Beppo is one of those places where you (or at least I) are(am) often too full at the end of the meal to have any room for dessert. Even water gets filling at the end. This is not a place to go if you're on a diet, especially if you don't exercise strict portion control. It's also not somewhere you go for a quiet dinner for two because, besides the large portion-sized entrees, all of the Buca di Beppo restaurants I've gone to have been crowded and noisy. If you tried whispering sweet nothings to your date, I'm afraid you'd end up shrieking it at him or her just to be heard. I'm not sure I've ever even seen a table for two at a Buca.

Spaghetti with Meatballs - sorry for the blurry picture)

Although, speaking of dates, on the night we went, it must have been some kind of Winter Formal type of evening for the local high school because many of the long tables were filled with teenagers, the guys in suits and the girls in really short gowns. Really short. Or I'm just old and way past 16 to appreciate teenage couture.

Valentine M&M Sugar Cookies

Valentine M&M Sugar Cookies - made dough February 7, 2014 from So We Think We Can Cook

As I look at my repertoire for Valentine-themed treats, I realize so many of them are red velvet in some shape or form. I like a good red velvet but I also believe in all things in moderation, including food dyes. So here's one way to forego the food color but still stay on theme - add Valentine M&Ms to it. All the pink, red, fuschia and white M&Ms you like. At first I was going to make a chocolate chip M&M cookie or a Monster cookie but I decided to go with a sugar cookie so the girly colors would show up better against a more pale cookie. Plain M&Ms work better for this type of cookie than peanut M&Ms, simply because they're not only flatter and won't stick out as much in a sugar cookie but also because I don't like peanuts in a non-peanut butter cookie.

The only thing I don't like about baking with M&Ms, plain or peanut, is the ones on the outside will inevitably crack during baking so they're just not as pretty when baked. The colors also bleed into the cookie so they're just not as pretty. I tried to circumvent that with these cookies by withholding a handful of M&Ms and pushing them into the cookies as soon as I took them out of the oven. It sort of worked. They look better in the pictures but because of the candy shell, didn't melt and adhere to the baked cookies as much as I would've liked. Despite how it sometimes looks, this is a good cookie option for kiddie Valentine parties. Kids like M&Ms, you don't have to worry about peanut allergies with the plain M&Ms and the only food coloring is in the M&Ms instead of the teaspoons or tablespoons of red food dye that goes into red velvet baked goods (that'll be tomorrow's recipe, ha).

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 C sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 t vanilla
3 C flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar
dash of salt
1 medium bag (12 oz) Plain M&M's, Valentine edition

1. Cream the butter and sugar for about 3 minutes, or until fluffy.&nbsp
2. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix for 2 more minutes.&nbsp
3. In a separate small mixing bowl combine all dry ingredients. Add to the butter mixture and mix until well combined. 
4. Pour in your M&M's and mix just until combined. Form into round balls (about 2 inches in size) and lay onto a cookie sheet (or chill or freeze for several hours). Press the tops down slightly. 
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until you see the cookies start to crack. If desired, press remaining M&Ms over the tops of baked cookies as soon as you remove from the oven.

Red Velvet Peanut Butter Blossoms

Red Velvet Peanut Butter Blossoms - made dough February 1, 2014 from I Am Baker

Did you know Valentine's Day is one of the easiest occasions to decorate baked goods for? I don't like to decorate my food and I'm not good at it but V-day is the one "holiday" I find easy to bake sweets apropos for the occasion. All you need is a heart-shaped cookie cutter, red food color, Valentine-colored candies and sprinkles, and chocolate hearts. Seriously. To prove it to you, I'm going to devote the next few baking posts leading up to Hallmark's Cupid's holiday to Valentine-themed treats. And by Valentine, I mean heart shapes and red and pink up the wazoo, fit to take to your child's school party, your company Valentine potluck (does anyone actually have those?) and, by Friday, even something for a romantic dinner for two.

An easy start is red velvet so get that bottle of red food color ready. How many versions of red velvet baked goods can I make over the years? I don't know; I'm still in discovery mode. Which continues with this red velvet twist on peanut butter blossoms or, as initially called on my blog with my favorite recipe for them, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Kisses. You can trot out the Valentine's Day theme with the red velvet version and literally top it off with hearts - Dove's milk chocolate hearts, that is. Remember, it's February. You can't get too schmaltzy with too many hearts.

I enjoyed the taste and texture of this version. It wasn't as peanut buttery as the original version which was okay by me as I like the added chocolate punch. I like eating this cookie best when it's just barely lukewarm as by then the cookie has cooled enough for the texture and flavor to be optimal but the chocolate heart is still soft and melt-y when you bite into it. If you're serving this for any type of Valentine's Day-related occasion, this is a fun cookie to make....and eat.

1 bag Hershey's Kisses (substitute chocolate hearts if you wish)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon red gel food coloring (I used Schilling red food coloring)
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
1/4 cup red sanding sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (only if baking immediately).
2. Beat butter, peanut butter, and sugar in stand mixer for about 2 minutes on medium speed. Reduce speed to low and add egg, milk, vanilla and red food coloring. Mix for about 30 seconds to incorporate, then increase speed to medium high and blend until light and fluffy.
3. In a separate bowl, sift cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt. With mixer on low speed, add flour mixture to sugar mixture and beat until just combined.
4. Shape dough into 1" balls. If desired, chill for at least 1 hour. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 F. 
5. Pour red sanding sugar into shallow bowl. Roll dough balls in sanding sugar and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper about 2 inches apart.
6. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. While cookies are baking, unwrap Hershey Kisses or heart-shaped Dove chocolates. When cookies are done, remove from oven and immediately place Hershey Kiss or Dove heart in the center of each cookie. Cool to room temperature.

Restaurant Review: Pick Up Stix

Pick Up Stix - lunch on January 25, 2014, Valencia, CA

A few weeks ago, I drove my parents down to Southern California to visit one of my cousins in the hospital. It was just a short weekend trip since I had work but we wanted to see my cousin in person so we decided to make the 5-hour drive over the weekend and come back the next day. I had another cousin in the area and my sister was flying in the same morning; we were going to meet at my other cousin's place so we could all go to the hospital together. We left early Saturday morning and got there around noon. Now, in Filipino culture, unless you're arriving with food for your host, it's typically bad form to come at mealtime, hungry and expecting to be fed. Which is why we stopped off at a strip mall on our way to get lunch first.

Pick Up Stix appears to be a chain but they seem to be primarily in Southern CA as their website locator doesn't show any in the Bay Area, only in So Cal. I'd never heard of them before but when we walked in, it seemed like a fancier Panda Express with similar price points and open seating. But instead of pointing to your order behind glass displays that hold trays of food, you actually order it at the register and they bring it to your table.

House Special Chicken with rice and potstickers

They offer lunch combos with rice or noodles, an entree and either potstickers, cheese wontons or an egg roll. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It's not haute cuisine but for under $10 a combo, it was good enough. I got the house special chicken combination with potstickers and I thought it was decent. The chicken was in bitsy pieces and I would've preferred larger chunks but at least it wasn't breaded and the sauce was tasty, albeit a trifle sweet.

Shrimp and Vegetables with rice and egg roll

They do offer a good selection of entrees so there's something for everyone. Not sure how authentic it is for Chinese food but for a fast, cheap place, this is a good option. The people behind the counter were very friendly and polite which was nice. All in all, it served its purpose well.

Mongolian Beef with cheese won tons

Frosted Lemon Sugar Cookies

Frosted Lemon Sugar Cookies - made dough January 24, 2014, baked on February 2, 2014 from Lulu the Baker

Sometimes it's annoying when I have a carton of milk to use up and I keep finding recipes that only use a tablespoon of it. On the flip side it's also annoying to find recipes that only use 1 tablespoon of milk and I have none in the house and don't want to buy a carton just to use 1 tablespoon (First World problem). I decided I'd rather be annoyed by the first instance than the second one because the first scenario means I already have the milk on hand and I can keep searching for more recipes that use it. Don't worry if you didn't follow that logic, I'm just thinking out loud.

This recipe used lemons, milk and cream cheese, all ingredients I had in abundance. It had the added advantage that I could make the dough when I had a spare 15 minutes, freeze it then bake it off and make the frosting when I had more time. Like during this year's very lopsided, uninteresting Super Bowl game where I had only the commercials to entertain me.

These make good "tea" cookies, i.e. if you want something cute and small to serve at an afternoon tea. The texture of the cookie was a cross between a butter cookie and a sugar cookie, halfway between cakey and chewy at the same time. The frosting dresses these cookies up a bit. They weren't as lemony as I expected and I think that was because the cream cheese in the frosting competed with the tang of the lemon. If you want it more lemony, I recommended increasing the amount of zest in the cookie dough and possibly not doing a cream cheese frosting but a pure lemon royal icing instead.

Cookies
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup crisco
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 tablespoon lemon zest
2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon milk
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Frosting

1/4 cup butter, softened

4 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 pound powdered sugar

pinch of salt

fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter, crisco, and sugar until fluffy. Add vanilla, egg, and lemon zest; mix. 
2. In a separate bowl, sift together flour, salt, and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to mixer and combine. Add milk and lemon juice, and stir until completely incorporated. 
3. Roll dough into tablespoon-sized balls and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are just beginning to turn golden on the edges. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.
4. To make the frosting, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth and well mixed. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar and salt. Stir. Mix in fresh lemon juice until the frosting reaches a spreadable consistency.