Tag: Cooking — Desserts

I dusted off the good ol' Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie book recently, and redeclared myself a pie master with the successful completion of a famed Salty Honey pie.  

The salty honey pie is perhaps my husband's favorite of the Brooklyn pie shop, and I was amazed that I could make a pretty good version of it during a Saturday.

I featured the pie during a dinner party, and was able to perfectly time the crust creation, freezing, preparation of the custard, baking, and cooling during the preparation of the appetizer and main course parts of the meal.  I actually had forgotten how great it is to make pies for dinner parties because of this ability to work on the pieces through a day, while doing other activities in the kitchen.

I started of course with the crust, which I put together, chilled, and then rolled out before freezing in a pie pan.

I then mixed together the custard, and strained it (the longest portion of the preparation) through a fine mesh sieve into the frozen crust.  (Note that the book recipe calls for an unbaked crust whereas the recipe linked above calls for a pre-baked shell.  Given the 45 minute baking time, I recommended an unbaked crust).

Custard pies are always tricky to figure out when to take out of the oven, and I baked the pie for slightly longer than the minimum baking time called for in the recipe for the sides to seem to truly set.

I then let the pie cool for approx. 4 – 5 hours and served it with regular sea salt instead of flaked (which I didn't have in the kitchen).  The result was a creamy, delicious and simple filling – I look forward to making it again!  

The only change I may make in the future is to make it a day ahead of time to let the filling chill in the fridge overnight.  But it's definitely not necessary, just a thought for personal preference.

I came across a Vanilla Bean Pudding Cake recipe from a King Arthur Flour email.  As blog readers will know, KAF is a go-to source for me for baked goods, from savory to sweet.  This recipe was particularly attractive for me because it hit two of my husband's favorite dessert features – vanilla and pudding.  

The recipe was counterintuitive to put together, but ultimately was pretty easy – and definitely doable for a work night.  I made just one modification, following the recipe comments.  I reduced the amount of sugar in the cake to 1/2 cup and used slightly less than 1/2 cup of sugar for the sauce.  

To assemble the pudding cake, you first simmer and thicken a vanilla pudding sauce on the stovetop, then pour it at the bottom of your baking dish.

Then you whisk together the dry and wet cake ingredients, first in individual bowls and then together.

Then you embark on the trickiest and most counterintuitive step – at least for me.  You pour and spread the much thicker cake batter on top of the liquid pudding layer.  Amazingly, you can in fact make a cake dough layer on top of the liquid layer, even though you expect it all to mix together.  Just pour and spread carefully!

And then pop the cake mix into the oven, and test the center towards the end of the baking time to make sure the cake is baked through.

The cake layers are slightly visible after baking, and when you eat the cake, the sauce and cake mix together wonderfully to make a rich and warm dessert.

The only additional change I would make on top of keeping the reduced sugar amounts is to add a bit of fresh fruit or fruit compote to diversify the flavors a bit.  But I definitely see myself making this again and again!

One of my favorite winter desserts is a bold molasses cookie.  I love the richness of molasses, and coupled with ginger, cloves and allspice – oh my!

I usually default to the Cook's Illustrated Molasses Spice Cookies with Orange Essence recipe, but I decided several weeks back to try another CI recipe, for Soft and Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies.  This recipe was super easy to whip up, and even in the face of less molasses than expected, I was able to put together a deliciously rich and warming cookie.  

First, I sifted together the dry ingredients as the oven warmed up.

I then creamed together the wet ingredients, substituting light brown sugar for dark brown sugar and adding in approx. 1/8 cup of maple syrup because I didn't have enough molasses to get to a full 1/2 cup.

Then incorporated dry into wet ingredients, and formed rounded balls.

I then baked the cookies for ten minutes, slightly less than the 11 minutes called for in the recipe.

I almost want to make the same inadvertent substitutions the next time I make these cookies because this first batch turned out so well!

Why return to tried and true recipes when you can experiment with something new?  That certainly seems to be the main theme of my blog, and this post is no exception.  

Despite chronicling at least three other recipes for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on my blog, including one dubbed "the best oatmeal cookies ever!", I have again returned to describe yet another recipe.  This recipe, from King Arthur Flour, won the KAF 2015 Recipe of the Year and I have been wanting to try it since it won that distinction.  

The recipe itself was quite easy to put together, as oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipes usually are, and I made just one minor modification to suit my tastes – reducing the amount of chocolate chips.  

I baked these cookies for 15 minutes, well within the 12 – 17 minute suggested baking time, and they cooled pretty quickly out of the oven.

The downside of these cookies were that they were a little too sweet for my tastes, a feature that other commenters on the KAF site flagged in their reviews.  I think that these would be great cookies for a last-minute kids' party, but otherwise, I'm not sure if I'll make these again.

A few months back, I made yet another King Arthur Flour cookie accessory purchase – the Chocolate Butter Cookie Set.  This set included a rectangular cookie stamp and delightful chocolate molds that produced international, vintage-style post stamp-like images.  While the cookie set sat unused for a few months, I finally came up with the perfect occasion to put it to use – a friend's summer birthday party.  

I am so happy when I put this great set to use.  I can definitely use these stamps every season, for any type of special event.  I've never produced such professional-looking cookies, and while they can be a bit time consuming because of the limited number of chocolate molds, these aren't nearly as overwhelming as a number of other baked goods I have made.  In fact, I may even make these cookies, following the King Arthur Double Chocolate Butter Cookies recipe, again this weekend!  

Details on their preparation below.

I first started the process by heating Ghirardelli white chocolate wafers that do not require tempering (lazy I know), and then poured chocolate by the tablespoon into the molds.  I then tapped each mold a bit, to make sure the chocolate spread evenly into the molds.  I refrigerated each mold for approx. 15 – 20 minutes until cool before popping the chocolates out and restarting the process.

After I started the chocolate topping preparation, I put together the cookie dough, which required beating the wet ingredients together while sifting the dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  I used all Dutch process cocoa instead of a half black cocoa, which I did not have nor could find at the store, and half Dutch process mix.

Then I combined the wet and dry ingredients, and shaped into a square form to chill.

After the dough square chilled, I rolled out into an 1/8-inch thick circle or square, and then used the stamp to start cutting out cookie shapes.  I had the most difficulty with this step because it was a very hot day, and the cookie dough kept sticking to the stamp, making it hard to get good-looking cookies.  I had to re-chill the dough, and when that didn't quite work, I put some sugar on the inside of the stamp to make it easier to release the cookie shapes.

Finally, after baking the cookies for 10 minutes and cooling them, it was time for assembly!  This was the most fun part, to see how wonderful and professional these cookies looked.

The only slight downside of these cookies was a personal preference – I wish the cookies themselves were harder and more dry (this recipe produced fairly soft cookies) to complement the hard chocolate toppings a la store-bought double chocolate European cookies.  However, others really liked the textural contrast of these two-part cookies, so seems like you can't go wrong with making these for any occasion.  

My husband and I love the Great British Baking Show (aka the Great British Bake Off in the UK).  It's a baking competition that features "real people" in the UK who arrive to a tent weekly to take on a new challenge – from bread to patisserie to cake.  During the latest season to air in the US, one episode featured the contestants making their own versions of biscotti, a hard, twice-baked Italian biscuit.  

I haven't been that exposed to biscotti in the past because of my nut allergy, but the contestants nut and nut-free versions of biscotti inspired me to try my hand at this treat.  I have since made two batches of biscotti, which are the perfect gift as they last up to one month (!) in an air-tight container.  I can't believe how easy it is to make this simple cookie, and I know it's going to become a staple in my kitchen.

For my first biscotti attempts, I followed the Cook's Illustrated Honey Lavender Biscotti recipe.  I omitted the optional lavender though because I didn't have any on hand and also ended up using around 1 tablespoon of minced orange zest because that is all one large orange would yield me.  

The recipe was surprisingly easy to construct, with only three initial challenges.

You first whisk most of the wet ingredients together in a large bowl.

Then add in the lovely smelling grated zest.

Then fold in the dry ingredients until just mixed.

This is where tricky part #1 comes in.  This dough is STICKY and very hard to shape.  So when Cook's Illustrated tells you to flour your hands, really flour your hands to shape the dough into logs – the flour makes all the difference.

Challenge #2 emerged while trying to figure out if the biscotti logs were baked enough.  The recipe says to bake until the loaves are "golden and just beginning to crack on top."  With no big cracks appearing, I decided mini-cracks / holes on a much darker loaf seemed ok?

Then the recipe eased up as I just needed to cut the loafs into equally-sized cookies!  

And here is where challenge #3 emerged.  The recipe said to place the cut cookies back on "the cookie sheet" but I had way too many cookies to put on the baking sheet, with equal spacing between them.  So I initially did this:

After putting the cookies back into the oven like this, I realized this cannot be right.  So I got another cookie sheet out, lined it with parchment and then placed half the cookies on that sheet.  This yielded cookies that actually crisped up during the second bake, though I will note that the cookies will dry out further after cooling, so don't feel that they need to have the signature "crack" out of the oven.  They will develop it after approx. 5 minutes of cooling.

These biscotti had a lovely, soft sweet flavor from the honey and a bit of light citrus from the orange zest.  They are a perfect tea-time treat, and even a week after I made them, still tasted fantastic.  I really can't wait to make these again and again!

Unfortunately my cookbooks have remained largely closed the past few months as I have instead gravitated to whatever shiny object comes my way – usually in the way of New York Times Cooking, Cook's Illustrated or King Arthur Flour emails.  These companies produce really wonderful content, complete with perfectly composed, beautiful pictures.

This latest baking effort was inspired by such an email from King Arthur Flour featuring Mini Fluted Lemon Cakes.  These cakes seemed like a perfect accompaniment to a small summer dinner party we were hosting in June.  And while I don't have a fluted cupcake pan, I do have a mini bundt pan that has not nearly gotten enough use to justify its place in our kitchen.  

And so to work I went on mini lemon bundt cakes.  They were actually perfect to prepare for a dinner party because they took virtually no time to prepare.  

I simply greased the mini bundt pan with grapeseed oil spray, and blended the dry ingredients.

I then turned to creaming together the wet ingredients.

Finally, poured the final batter into the greased bundt pan.

I baked the mini cakes for approx. 16 minutes to account for the greater volume of these six cakes to the mini cupcakes the recipe envisioned.

And then I was able to easily remove the bundts to cool and serve.

The cakes had a great lemon flavor, but unfortunately the texture was fairly dry.  Other recipe makers commented on this challenge for their attempts, and I had tried to adjust the recipe to compensate by substituting lemon juice for the lemon powder and by using cream instead of milk.  However, my cakes were also quite dry so unless I can figure out how to further alter, I'm not sure if I will make them again.  That being said, the cakes were still well enjoyed at our dinner party!

For a work party earlier this year, I had the twin task of figuring out a dessert that could meet both the dietary restrictions of a c0-worker with celiac disease and the needs of co-workers observing Passover.  Thankfully, there is great overlap in practical terms of what those restrictions mean for baking purposes, so my search easily led to coconut macaroons.  

I've never made these treats before and was excited to try a completely new dessert.  I ended up using a Cook's Illustrated recipe after looking at a few different approaches on the internet.  Unlike many recipes, this version did not use sweetened, condensed milk or other additives.  Rather, it had just four ingredients – flaked coconut, granulated sugar, egg whites, and almond extract.  

While it was pretty easy to blend all the ingredients together, the result wasn't quite what I had hoped for.

Namely, these perfect little balls that went into the oven:

Came out like this:

While they tasted delicious, the spread cookies were definitely not the outcome I was expecting.  I still don't quite know what happened, but potentially it was over-processing the mixture, the lack of cornstarch, or even the humidity?  Or could it be that my food processor couldn't fit all the ingredients, so I had to hand stir the contents?   I also had to bake the cookies for longer than expected for them to set, but that was well after the spreading had occurred.

Next time, I'll probably try the cornstarch first and then move on to diagnosing what else could change to result in round macaroons.

As I think about what spurred my latest baking attempt – Florentine Lace Cookies – I have to admit that my memory is a bit fuzzy.  I think that my husband may have seen these cookies at a bakery (or maybe on the Internet?  or TV?) and wanted me to make them at home.  Or maybe it was me who came across this cookie recipe and decided to make it?

In any case, for a spring weekend dinner party, we decided to try these delicate, brightly flavored orange, nutty cookies.  I used a Cook's Illustrated / America's Test Kitchen recipe I found online and prepared the cookies in the afternoon before starting the dinner courses.

The recipe was relatively easy to follow, and thankfully didn't take up too much time, allowing me to complete my dinner main dishes well before guests arrived!  First, I pulsed the slivered almonds into a meal while heating up the liquid ingredients.  I then removed the cooked liquid ingredients from the heat to stir in the dry ingredients, thus forming a warm, sticky dough.

This warm dough was exceedingly easy to shape and flatten into rounds for baking.

This is when the trickiest part of the process occurred – for how long to bake these treats, and at what temperature?   The first batch at 350 degrees were definitely way over-baked (if not burnt) and so for the second batch, I reduced the oven temperature to about 310 – 315.

I baked the second batch of dough for 14 minutes on the top rack, and it resulted in a much better browned (not burnt) cookie.  So definitely heed online warnings to use a lower oven temperature for these cookies, and watch them closely to avoid over-baking.

The texture of the cookies was perfect – lightly crispy throughout, but still showcasing the almond and orange flavors of the component parts.  The chocolate added a great bitterness to this sweet cookie, and I can definitely see this becoming a standard winter treat in our home.