Peanut Butter Chunker Cookies

Peanut Butter Chunker Cookies - made dough July 1, 2017 modified from from Tastes of Lizzy T

If you go by the dates of when I’ve baked desserts in the past month or two, you’ll notice I’ve cut back a lot. That’s mostly because it’s been hot where I live and I can’t bear to turn the oven on as often as I used to. I’m cheap enough to hate running the air conditioner while I have the oven on. Seems expensively counter-intuitive and wasteful to do both. I prefer the air conditioner since I can’t stand the heat so I keep the oven off.

The good thing about cookies though is you can make the dough ahead of time and only bake off as much or as little as you want at any given time. Since it’s been hot, I had the oven on only long enough to bake a cookie sheet of these for work then called it a day.

The original recipe had a bunch of add-ins. I substituted a chopped up bar of Cadbury milk chocolate with caramel and peanuts that I’d bought at Heathrow when I had a connection on my way to Milan. Heathrow Duty Free and I are friends. I always walk out with slabs of chocolate to bring back home, distribute to my family and reserve some for baking.

This spread a little more than I thought it would and I don’t know if that’s because it was so hot when I made the dough and my butter was more soft than I would’ve liked. I did freeze the dough balls before baking but that doesn’t help as much if the cookie dough starts out soft because the overly soft butter made the dough more liquid before it could be frozen. But this was still a good cookie, especially if you like the peanut butter chocolate combination.

1 cup butter, softened

2/3 cup smooth peanut butter
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup dark chocolate chunks
1/2 cup milk chocolate chunks
1/2 cup toffee bits

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and peanut butter until smooth. Add in dark brown sugar and beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add in eggs, one at a time, beating until just combined and add vanilla. Beat until combined.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking soda, cornstarch, cinnamon and salt. Add in two additions to butter mixture, beating on low speed after each addition until just combined. 
3. Fold in chocolate chunks and toffee bits. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen dough balls on baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven, transfer cookies to wire rack and let cool completely.

Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - made July 9, 2017 from Tastes Better From Scratch

I’ve had this cake on my pinterest board for awhile and it looked really good so I finally made it. Except mine didn’t turn out looking as well as the original blog I got the recipe from. Yeah, that happens more often than I care to admit.

I also (re)discovered that my swirling skills aren’t very good. I’m too tentative and don’t go bold with swirling because I get too paranoid that I’ll over-swirl and the two batters I’m trying to swirl will end up being too mixed in and incorporated with each other instead of standing out as separate-but-swirled equals. Bah.

Subsequently, this ended up being partial vanilla cake with pockets of melted cinnamon rather than vanilla cake with subtle “swirls” of cinnamon goodness. Trust me, there’s a difference. Still, I liked the cake itself. But I should’ve cut back on the frosting. I tried to get creative with it and add cinnamon to make it a cinnamon cream cheese frosting (cuz you know I don’t like cream cheese). But I cut too large of a hole in my Ziploc bag that I was using to pipe the frosting onto the cake so instead of dainty lines of frosting artistically criss crossing over the cake, I ended up with wide, flat lines like I was about to do a basketweave design. It wasn’t pretty. 

Rather than present it that (really lame) way, I decided to cover my frosting sins by just smoothing all the lines into a thin layer of frosting. Um, bad idea. Turns out I didn’t like the taste of the frosting itself; too tangy and not sweet enough. It might’ve been fine if I really had executed thin lines of it sparingly over the cinnamon vanilla cake so the sweetness of the cake could offset the tanginess of the frosting. But covering the whole thing with a layer of frosting; a no-no. I’d say this cake was okay but definitely not my finest baking hour.  

Cake
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup butter, melted

Cinnamon Swirl
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese
1-2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8" baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, egg and vanilla. Stir in melted butter. Pour mixture into prepared pan and smooth into an even layer.
3. Cinnamon Swirl: cream butter, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon until smooth.
4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture evenly over the cake batter. Use a knife to swirl through the cake and disperse the mixture throughout the cake batter.
5. Bake 32-37 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 
6. While cake is baking, make frosting: cream butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla and cinnamon together until smooth and of desired consistency. Drizzle over warm cake; serve warm.

Soft Batch Double Chocolate Cookies

Soft Batch Double Chocolate Cookies - made dough May 28, 2017 from Baker by Nature

Back to the recipes!

Do you have a chocolate tooth? Do you like soft, chewy, fudgy, rich cookies you can just sink your teeth into and have your eyes roll to the back of your head? Break out the good chocolate then and try this recipe.

The dough is easy to make and I advise my usual method of portioning into cookie dough balls then freezing for several hours or overnight before baking. These don’t spread much and you want to keep it that way.

The trickiest thing about chocolate chocolate cookies is not making the dough or chilling it. It’s about the baking. You can’t go by the usual check of “bake until edges are golden brown”. Hello, chocolate chocolate cookie. There are no “golden brown edges”, just chocolate edges. You can always use a timer but even then, ovens are different and baking time is a guideline, not an absolute, depending on your particular oven.

I go by how they look. This is the rare cookie where I do look for the tops to be “dry” and have some cracks BUT you want to take the cookies out just when they’ve achieved that look, not when they’ve been sporting it for minutes on end, baking and baking in the oven. I peer intently at the middles and take out the cookies right when the middles don’t look raw anymore. Remember that chocolate “sets” once it’s cooled and that’s how you get that fudgy texture. If you overbake these, they’ll be cakey and dry rather than fudgy and chewy.

I baked a cookie in a mini skillet and topped with ice cream

Milk drinkers will probably want to make sure there’s a big glass ready when they take a bite. Make sure you let these cool completely. Yes, I know, waiting sucks but I like the soft, rich, fudgy texture of these when they’re completely cool. If they’re even lukewarm, they tend to be a little too soft and mushy for me. You can also taste the richness of the chocolate once it’s completely cool so please make sure you use the high quality chocolate. I used Valrhona but you can also use Tcho or Scharffenberger.

Mini pizzookie

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup + 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup milk chocolate chips

1. Place semisweet chocolate chips and butter in the top half of a double boiler set over hot water. Heat, whisking until melted and smooth; set aside.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt; set aside.
3. In a separate medium-sized bowl, whisk together the sugars, eggs, milk and vanilla. 
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir to combine; do not overmix.
5. Fold in the chocolate-butter mixture and the milk chocolate chips into the batter, stirring until just combined. Dough will be soft. Cover and chill for 10-15 minutes.
6. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen dough balls, reduce heat to 300 degrees and bake for 18-20 minutes. Cool cookies completely before serving.

Restaurant Review: Montesacro Pinseria and Hamilton

Montesacro Pinseria - dinner on July 21, 2017

More than seven months ago, I was one of those people who was online in a virtual waiting room, waiting for my turn to purchase tickets to the musical, Hamilton, which was coming to the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. Tickets went on sale starting at 10 am. Before 10 am, you could log on and join the virtual waiting room. At 10 am, everyone who was in the waiting room was randomly assigned a place in “line” to purchase tickets. My random number was in the 45000s. Yes, there were more than 45,000 people ahead of me to purchase tickets. Each person could only purchase up to 6 tickets. During the 5 hours and 46 minutes that I waited in line/online, I looked up how many seats were in the theater, calculated how many performances there would be multiplied by how many seats divided by 6 tickets per person to figure out if being #45xxx would be good enough to still have tickets available by the time it was my turn. What? I’m a numbers nerd and it helped kill 5 minutes.

Fortunately, being number 45,000-something was good enough to still get tickets. Although by the time I got in and was able to scan the available dates and the seats that were left, I had to book a date almost at the end of their SF run and could only get 4 seats together in the mezzanine and 2 in the orchestra, not 6 seated together. No problem. I invited 3 other friends for the cost of the tickets and sold the 2 orchestra seats to another friend. We were going to Hamilton.

But first, on show night, we went to dinner….of course. My friend Jenny was the most familiar with San Francisco since she’d lived there for years so we went with her recommendation of Montesacro Pinseria-Enoteca, which was near the Orpheum Theater. Pinseria, as I found out later, isn’t pizza but is a Mediterranean flatbread with toppings just like a pizza. Most people probably wouldn’t make the distinction.

What I cared about was that it be good and it was. As our server explained to us, Montesacro focuses on healthy ingredients. As an aside, they don’t serve sodas since it doesn’t fit with their healthy eating vision or their focus on using ingredients that are organic and sustainable. That was okay by me because I was focused on the pinseria.

Pietralata - Grated Pecorino/Parmagiano, Mozzarella, Guanciale, Egg, Cracked Black Pepper

I ordered the Maranella which was flatbread with spicy sausage, broccolini, and burrata. I know, why broccolini, given my aversion to vegetables? Ah, but you’re talking to the champion picky eater who can pick anything I don’t want out of my food. Of course, later I realized I could’ve just asked them to omit the broccolini entirely but our wait person was so earnest about how they use fresh, healthy ingredients locally sourced as much as possible that it didn’t occur to me to counter her spiel with “I’ll take the Maranella without the fresh, organic, locally sourced broccolini.” I might have even eaten a spear or two in an attempt to add some healthy to my bites. As my friends bluntly told me, “it won’t kill you.” Humph. So they say.

Maranella - Mozzarella, Broccolini, Spicy Pork Sausage & Stracciatella di Burrata

The flatbread was really good as was the whole pinseria. It’s best eaten right away while it’s still warm as it did have a tendency to get a little chewy at the ends as it cooled and it also got a bit soggy in the middle. I couldn’t finish the whole thing (had to leave room for dessert, ‘kay?) as it was a generous serving but I liked what I had, especially using the uber-cool all-metal pizza cutter that came with each of our pinserias. 

Corviale - Buffalo Mozzarella, Porcini Mushroom, Lardo & Parsley

As I was wont to do, I had checked out the menu online so I already knew what I wanted for dessert. The menu called it a small pinseria stuffed with pistachio Nutella. I had a vision of a mini-calzone with Nutella lava spilling out sprinkled with toasted chopped pistachios. The real thing was not quite close to my vision. The pistachio showed up as some form of green paste that was mixed in with the Nutella. It wasn’t “stuffed” so much as “spread on the inside” like peanut butter or jelly. It was lukewarm when it arrived and for texture purposes, I would’ve preferred it served just a bit warmer as the flatbread was best when it was warm to hot.

Pinsa con Nutella al Pistacchi di Bronte: small pinsa stuffed with Sicilian Pistachio Nutella

The actual pistachio-nutella “paste” wasn’t that appetizing to look at. There’s something off-putting about green paste. Which was unfortunate as the taste itself was pretty good. I don’t know if that was due to the pistachio paste but it really drew out the flavor of Nutella. If I had to tweak this dessert, I would make it more like my vision of a thin Calzone stuffed with Nutella and garnished with pistachios. And I say “thin” because I was already feeling kinda bread-y full from the pinseria.

Budino - chocolate chili mousse

The other dessert we shared was the chocolate chili mousse. I’m not a believer in spiking my chocolate with spices or fruit. I had a tiny, tiny taste of the mousse and the chili wasn’t very prevalent. That means I couldn’t really taste it from the tiny tip-of-the-spoon-ful I had. A light, airy mousse is probably a better topper to a pinseria but I’m glad I tried the pistachio-Nutella pinseria, even if it wouldn’t make my top 10 list of dessert beauty contestants.

After dinner, of course, it was showtime. I won’t go into raptures about Hamilton here….no, wait, that’s a lie. The show was excellent. It was pretty hyped up so I was afraid my expectations would be too high and I’d be disappointed but that wasn’t the case. I had actually read the 800-page+tome by Ron Chernow (yes, I’m a girl-nerd) so I had a good idea of Hamilton’s life story and could follow the musical pretty well. 

I expected great voices and I got them. I was particularly expressed by the purity and beauty of the cast’s voices, especially by the female leads (Eliza Hamilton!!). I expected an edgy musical score and I got that too. Hamilton, the birth of our nation and rap? Not your usual combination. It was brilliant. King George was an unexpected riot (cue much hysterical laughing). Props to Lin-Manuel Miranda for his vision and creativity in conceiving and executing such a score and such a show. For me, it was worth the 7+ month wait.

5 minutes before showtime

Restaurant Review: Nabe and Night at the Museum

Nabe - dinner on July 20, 2017

I’m almost caught up with my round-the-world eating spree. Left Milan, went back to work, reviewed the Mexican restaurant next door and now we head back up to San Francisco. One night after work, our auditors took most of the team out to dinner (an annual thing) at a restaurant in San Francisco called Nabe. I’d never heard of it before but that means nothing since there are so many great restaurants in the city and I haven’t been to even a tiny fraction of them.

Nabe was a small enough restaurant that they hired out the whole place for a couple of hours that night and could seat the 40 or so of us who went, albeit just barely. There were 2 and 4-toppers as well as a long table in the center of the room that could accommodate 16-20 people (I didn’t count). I sat at a 4-topper with 3 of my coworkers and at each place was a burner. Because Nabe was a hot pot restaurant. If you’ve never been to one, you’re missing out.

The premise is you order what broth you wanted as well as what proteins, veggies and noodles (as extras) that didn’t already come with your original order. They bring it out in a soup pot, set it on the burner, turn on the burner, bring your proteins and vegetables and you cook your dinner once your chosen broth was sufficiently hot enough.

Each person could order their own “set” and Nabe’s recommendation is for a maximum of 2 people to share one set. What they mean by “set” is half a hot pot. For efficiency’s sake, if you wanted a different order or broth than the person across from you who was sharing your burner and therefore the same pot, they had a divider in the pot so you could each enjoy your half of the pot without commingling your set.

Tako Su Octopus Salad

At my table of four, we started with the Tako Su Octopus Salad with cucumber and vinaigrette and Tofu with Kimchee. Plain eater here passed on those. But I did partake of and enjoy the Kurobuta Pork Sausage (delicious) and the Gyoza filled with Kurobuta pork (also good).

Kurobuta Pork Sausage

Tofu with Kimchee

Gyoza

But the main event was the hot pot set. I ordered the Sukiyaki which was Wagyu beef and shirataki in Warishita broth. I don’t know what all that was but it sounded good.  My coworker, Eileen, who sat across from me and shared the same pot and burner got a miso broth so we had the pot with a divider. Super cool and super convenient for me because my Sukiyaki with its “Warishita broth” came with a bunch of veggies in it. Um, okay. My head knows that’s what helps make the broth so tasty but it would’ve gone to waste with me if Eileen hadn’t been a veggie lover and very accommodating in my tossing most of my vegetables over our hot pot divider into her broth. 

Sukiyaki

Miso broth on the bottom half of the divided hot pot set

They also brought out a separate plate of vegetables for those who ordered the miso broth since miso broth came out plain without any veggies already added. Once our hot pot began bubbling, I started adding the thin slices of Wagyu beef. I don’t do hot pot often so I wasn’t sure of the “right” way to do it but I figure there’s no wrong way since it was my hot pot and my dinner. My broth already came with udon noodles in it but you can also order more noodles. They offered a bowl of rice which I took them up on, the better to enjoy the super-freaking-delicious broth. Everything was good but for the broth alone, I’d go back again and I’m telling everyone I know they should go to Nabe and order it. 

Normally with hot pot or even a really good ramen place, I like the broth initially but as it keeps cooking and you eat your way through the bowl (or pot), it tends to get more and more salty so I tend to only eat/drink/slurp it at the beginning. Not so at Nabe. The broth was amazing from beginning to end. Even after I had cooked all my proteins (we ordered scallops as an add-in), I couldn’t seem to stop eating/drinking the broth. I wasn’t even hungry anymore but I still wanted the broth. Did I mention it was super-freaking-delicious broth? Because it was.

Fortunately, since the hot pot was, you know, hot, I couldn’t actually pick it up and slurp the broth straight out of it so I eventually did back off because I was getting full. But not so full that I didn’t have dessert. There were only three desserts on the menu and I chose the one that seemed most palatable to me: butter mochi cake with either black sesame ice cream or green tea ice cream.

Butter Mochi Cake with Black Sesame ice cream

Here’s a not-so-secret quirk of mine: I don’t have very Asian taste buds. Doesn’t matter that I’m Asian. I still don’t like many traditional Asian flavors. I don’t care for mango, ube, jackfruit (my Filipino ancestors would cringe at me), lychees, guava, passionfruit, dragonfruit, green tea or, as it turned out, black sesame. At least not in ice cream. I ordered my butter mochi cake to come with black sesame ice cream, thinking I would at least try it. Which I did. Turns out I don’t like black sesame ice cream either. I don’t mind sesame flavor in savory foods and occasionally cook with sesame oil and sesame seeds. But I didn’t care for the flavor in ice cream. My Asian companions who shared the dessert with me thought the ice cream was delicious so okay, yeah, it’s just me.

I did better with the butter mochi cake. Mochi has a chewy, spongy texture and the cake was better than the one I’d tried to makefrom scratch some time ago; it wasn’t as sweet as mine was and had better flavor and texture. My non-Asian taste buds would’ve liked it with vanilla ice cream instead of black sesame or green tea but that’s neither here nor there.

Me with a few of my coworkers in front of the California Academy of Sciences

After dinner, our evening outing included A Night at the Museum at the California Academy of Sciences which wasn’t too from Nabe. The place was quite busy for a Thursday night but it turns out the Night at the Museum only occurred every Thursday and rumor in the crowd said it was a “good date night” so that might explain some of the activity. We didn’t have a set agenda other than to wander around aimlessly, chatting amongst ourselves and queueing up at the bar. I don’t drink so I stuck to the wandering around aimlessly and chatting part. 

Jellyfish

I only took a few pictures as some of the more interesting exhibits didn’t have good lighting for cell phone pictures (most of mine turned out too dark). The jellyfish were the prettiest ones to me, as long as they were in their tank with the changing lights to show off their translucence.

All in all, a fun evening and outing. Big thumbs up for Nabe as well and thank you to Deloitte, our auditors.