NYC: Bakery Review - Baked NY

Baked NYC - visited on November 17, 2016

After we visited Dominique Ansel Bakery, the other bakery on my NYC bucket list to visit was Baked New York. I have all three of their baking books, I've even made recipes from them (that doesn't always happen, ha) and I wanted to try the famous Baked salty-sweet brownie.

Fortunately, there was a Baked location not too far from Dominique Ansel's and within walking distance. I'm sure at this point my friend Shawn would like me to mention that my definition of "walking distance" might be a bit farther than normal people's. After all, the day before, on my subway ride from JFK to Manhattan, I misread some directions I had prepared beforehand and got off at the wrong subway station. I ended up walking from Queens to Manhattan, crossing over the Ed Koch Bridge to make it to our hotel near Grand Central Station. See? Walking distance. Normal people might've just gotten back on the subway and tried again. Piffle. As long as I had my phone's GPS turned on and two good feet, I don't see why I can't walk it, even if it did mean dragging my carry-on with me. Good thing it had wheels.

In any case, I digress. Baked NY was maybe a mile - or so - from Dominique Ansel Bakery so we did walk there. It was a nice little bakery cafe with some tempting display cases of baked goods for sale. Unfortunately, both of us were still full from the cronut and couldn't eat anything more while we were at Baked. Sad panda!

But there was no law against buying stuff "to go" and planning to eat them later back at the hotel so that's what we did. The hardest part was narrowing it down to a few choices. So many delicious options! But I knew there were other bakeries I wanted to try and I reluctantly accepted I really couldn't eat whole display cases at each bakery. Shawn and I settled on the apple crumble bar, the brookster, and the famous sweet-salty Baked brownie.

My review of each:

The apple crumble bar was amazing. Seriously. Perfect shortbread crust, perfect flavor and texture apples, perfect topping. Did I mention perfect? It was moist but not soggy. Apples are in season in the fall so it's always a good time to get an apple dessert. This was delicious.

The Brookster

Sadly, I wasn't quite as impressed with the brookster. It's a brownie "pie" shell with a chocolate chip cookie filling. Sounds good, right? I think this would have been great when it was just out of the oven and cooled to lukewarm. That's how spoiled I am when I bake my own desserts. When we ate this one, while it wasn't dry exactly, it wasn't as fudgy and moist as I would have expected. Personally I think I like my own version as a chocolate chip cookie tart a bit better.

The Baked Salty-Sweet Brownie

Happily, the third of our purchase, the Baked brownie made up for everything. This brownie IS everything. The funny part is, during our time in New York, we I was visiting so many different bakeries and buying so many things "to try" that I couldn't even get to my half of the brownie until after the trip. Shawn managed to eat her half right before we left. I put my half in my backpack with the intent of eating it on the plane ride home. But I forgot all about it until a few days after I had gotten back from the trip. By then, my snobby palate would've said "forget it" and chucked the brownie because who wants a week-old baked good? Not this girl. Except it seemed a shame not to at least have a bite, even if it was just to say I did try it and see if it met my it-must-be-dry-by-now expectations. Color me sheepish because I couldn't have been more wrong. Astonishingly, not only was it still moist and fudgy but it was another amazing (half)piece of deliciousness. And you know I know my brownies. So that's saying something. Plus I liked the large sugar crystals they sprinkled on top to give the brownie a bit of sweet crunch. If you ever get a chance to try a Baked brownie, run, don't walk, to get one. It was freaking delicious and worth every calorie.

NYC: Bakery Review - Dominique Ansel Bakery

Dominique Ansel Bakery - visited on November 17, 2016

Happy 2017! It's that time of the (new) year where I take a break from baking and I give anyone trying to live up to their new year's resolutions to eat healthy and lose weight a break from any tempting new baking recipes, myself included. I've been saving up the next month's worth of posts to food-chronicle my most recent trip to New York City last November. Because you know I just went there to eat and yes, that's practically all I did while I was there. I met my friend Shawn who was there the first part of the week for work and we spent the last part of the week eating. Just eating.

I love New York....for about 3 days. Then the suburbanite in me starts to feel claustrophobic with the masses of people and tall buildings and honking cars. But for those first 3 days, I don't think there's a better spot on earth if you're a foodie. New York City is my food mecca. I've never eaten anything bad in New York. I spend most, if not all, of my time in Manhattan and I know my local NYC friends would chastise me for not venturing out more broadly. It isn't like I don't want to explore more but it's mostly a logistics issue. I end up having a long list of places I want to go to in Manhattan and by the time I get to even a fraction of my list, the 3 days are up and I'm fleeing the city.

Knowing my timetable, I prioritized the trip. The first priority was to try the original cronut from Dominique Ansel's Bakery in Soho. If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know I "met" Dominique Ansel when he came to talk at my company. I won his baking book and took a selfie with him - that counts as meeting him, even if he more than likely doesn't remember me from the countless other adoring fans he (rightly) has. If you don't follow Dominique Ansel Bakery on Instagram, you're missing out on amazing food porn and a social media look at a man who clearly loves what he does, is amazing at it and loves to share that passion with others. Go to Instagram right now and follow him then come back; I'll wait.

I've tried a knockoff of a cronut from Paris Baguette but I wanted to try the real thing made by the cronut's inventor so that was top of my NY foodie bucket list. To not tempt fate because I'd already heard of the long lines outside of his bakery every morning and the limited number of cronuts available (you'd have to be there at least 1-2 hours before the bakery opens to have a good chance of cronut purchase), I ventured to pre-order. He announces a monthly cronut flavor ahead of time and opens up the cronuts for pre-order for each two-week period.

November's flavor was Maple Pecan with spiced sugar - yum, right? For the time period when we would be there, the pre-ordering opened up on October 31. I confess, I had other stuff going on that day (I know, foodie fail) so I didn't even check the preorder site until that night. Only come to find out the cronuts available for preorder on the Friday-Sunday when we would be in town were already sold out. SOLD OUT. Apparently I had underestimated the cronut craze. Silly me.

Fortunately, we were going to be there on a Thursday-Sunday and there were 4 remaining cronuts available for preorder for Thursday. I don't think my trigger finger ever triggered so fast in securing those last 4 cronuts. They limited preorders to no more than 6 per customer but I figured 4 would be good enough, especially since the website said cronuts are best eaten within 8 hours of purchase. Between Shawn and me, I was confident we could put away 2 cronuts each in an 8-hour period.

Once our cronut preorder was secured, we built the plans for our first full day in New York City around picking them up. Which meant Dominique Ansel's Bakery was our first subway ride and first walk. We were on a cronut mission. I have to say, having heard about lining up 1-2 hours ahead of time to get a non-preordered cronut, I highly recommend going the preorder route if you plan to be in NYC on specific dates and can get your preorder in on time. By the time we got to the bakery, it wasn't crowded and our cronuts were ready for pickup at the 11 am time I had secured. Winning.

It was also winning that I liked November's flavor of maple pecan. The cronut was (not surprisingly) delicious. It really is a perfect blend between croissant and doughnut. Flaky layers, creamy filling, glaze, crunchy sugar coating; all perfection. The only thing that surprised me - and it probably shouldn't have - is I got full on just one. As in, I had no room for the second one in my allotment or for anything else for awhile. That shouldn't have been surprising considering how many calories must be in a cronut but let's be honest, I was disappointed in my consumption capacity. Only another foodie would understand that statement,

Fortunately, we had gotten two of the cronuts packaged up to go while we consumed two onsite in the cute little seating area in the bakery. So we figured we had an 8-hour countdown to consume our second cronuts. And since we were already there and my eyes are always bigger than my stomach, I had also purchased (to go) a DKA or Dominique's Kouign Amann, pronounced "koon ah-man" which is described on his website as "tender, flaky, croissant-like dough with a caramelized crunchy crust." I ate it later in the day and can I tell you those words do not do justice to the real thing? OMG, despite my mission and longing for an original Dominique Ansel cronut, if I had to choose, I would pick the DKA as my favorite.  It was SO GOOD. I've had a kouign amann before, in Paris no less but the DKA was better. The best. Highly recommend.

The DKA

Thus our first bakery excursion in New York City didn't disappoint. If you're ever in Soho, you need to go to Dominique Ansel's Bakery. Are you following him on Instagram yet?

Penzey's Baked Ham and Cheese

Ham and Cheese Bake - made December 3, 2016 from Penzey's

Good-bye 2016! To be honest, I won't be sorry to see you go. I will end on a savory note before too much time passes as I will be hanging up my oven mitts for the month of January and have a different set of posts coming up for the new year. But first, let's crank this one out. I found this recipe on Penzey's website and with newfound, albeit short-lived, enthusiasm for making "real food" and using some spices I recently purchased from Penzey's, this looked right up on my alley to venture to make. That means it's both easy to make and something my picky palate would eat. I did modify it slightly though by omitting the mushrooms since I don't like them. I also chopped the onion in small pieces so they wouldn't get in the way of my eating. I don't mind onions if they're small enough and go unnoticed when I take a bite. I'm okay with the flavor of onions, it's the slippery texture I'm not wild about. But when you mix them with equally-soft-textured pasta, small bits of cooked onion are fine.

Of course, typical of my cooking efforts, I decided I knew better than the recipe because when I was putting this together, the 1 1/2 cups of pasta I boiled didn't look like it would be enough for the amount of sauce that the recipe made. I also decided that not only was I going to use up the leftover Honeybaked Ham from Thanksgiving but I would also add some turkey sausage kielbasa for extra protein.

The additional protein turned out to be a good idea, the doubling of the amount of pasta - cough - less so. Yup, it came out a bit dry since now there wasn't enough sauce for the amount of pasta I used. Oops. I also discovered baking the casserole dish when you don't have enough sauce makes the top layer of pasta shells a bit, er, chewy. Ah, you have to bake the dish. Now all that "extra" sauce makes sense to prevent the dish from drying out. So that's a whole post worth of singular advice: don't use too much pasta in this recipe.

Other than my usual foibles of cooking, this dish was fine. It could use a little spice (and remember I have bland taste buds so that's saying something) so feel free to use hot links or some other kind of spicy protein. Or add some (Penzey's) pepper.

A serving with a faux Red Lobster biscuit

1 1/2 cups pasta (elbow macaroni or shells)
2 tablespoons butter
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional, I left them out)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup flour
1/2 to 1 teaspoon Penzey's pepper, to taste
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/3 cups milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 1/2 pounds cooked, cubed ham
1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cook the pasta according to package directions and drain. 
2. While pasta is cooking, melt the butter over medium heat in a large skillet, Add the mushrooms and onion and cook until tender and golden, stirring frequently, about 10 minutes.
3. Reduce heat to low, sprinkle on the flour and pepper and stir to combine. Gradually add the stock and milk, stirring vigorously as you drizzle it in; simmer until thickened. Add the cheese, nutmeg and lemon juice. Stir until melted and combined, 3-5 minutes. 
4. Add the pasta and ham; stir to combine. Spoon into a greased casserole dish. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese and bake at 350 degrees. uncovered, for 30 minutes, until bubbling and golden.

"My Favorite" Vanilla Cupcakes

"My Favorite" Vanilla Cupcakes - made December 17, 2016, modified from Cookies & Cups

This was the original title of the cupcakes on Cookies & Cups' blog but I had to put them in quotes for myself as I don't know that they're my favorite. Having a favorite is always so subjective. And I honestly don't know if I made these properly or not. I am hit or miss with making cupcakes successfully. And by successfully, I mean with the soft fluffy (but not cake-mix cakey) texture that's part of what denotes (to me) an excellent cupcake.

There are several important factors to making fluffy cupcakes. The amount of flour is critical. When recipes give only volume measurements and not weight measurements, it's hard to get it exactly right since there are different ways of measuring flour. You can sift first then spoon into the measuring cup, resulting in less flour than if you did the dip-and-scoop method. You're not supposed to scoop the flour then pack it down or else you'll end up with too much flour and chances are higher that your cupcakes will be dense.

How much you mix the batter is also critical. Too little and not enough air will be incorporated into the batter. Too much and you beat too many air pockets into the batter which collapse upon baking. Not to mention you risk developing the gluten in the flour and the cupcakes will become tough and chewy. Good in bread, not good in cupcakes.

Baking time is also important. If you bake it too long, your cupcakes will be dry. If you underbake it, your cupcakes will be dense. The latter is often my problem and I think it was that this time too. I swear the toothpick came out clean when I tested the cupcakes but with some cakes and cupcakes, that doesn't mean the baked goods are done. They weren't raw but they probably could've used another minute in the oven for a lighter texture.

For the most part, though, the flavor was really good and the texture was almost as fluffy as I wanted. Make sure you use real vanilla extract. Adding seeds from a vanilla bean or an extra teaspoon of vanilla bean paste wouldn't hurt either. Oh, and this makes 2 dozen cupcakes so if you don't need that many, you can easily halve the recipe for an even dozen.

1 3/4 cups cake flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, room temperature, cut into small cubes
4 eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste, optional but recommended

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a cupcake pan with cupcake liners.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, combine the cake flour, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder and salt; mix briefly.
3. With mixer on low, drop in butter, a few cubes at a time, until butter in all in and mix resembles coarse sand.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, on low speed, mixing only until just incorporated.
5. Slowly pour in milk and vanilla. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes until batter is smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
6. Fill liners 2/3 full and bake for 15-20 minutes until centers are set and toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting. I did a simple vanilla frosting: 4 tablespoons butter beaten until soft and creamy then add powdered sugar and whole milk until you achieve the desired consistency.