Almond Bergamot Bundt Cake

A couple of weeks ago, I set out to make a pound cake. You see, we’ve been getting an awesome egg share this year from Southtown Farms, and my family and I figured we’d be able to go through the full share at a dozen a week. Well, we were doing just fine with it, actually, until one day someone accidentally bought an extra dozen eggs or two to make quiche, and then we just had a million damn eggs. I’d seen some pound cake recipes online that used a whole lot of eggs, so I looked at a few (here’s one I used for reference) and made up the rest based on what ingredients I had around.

We ended up bringing this cake to my aunt & uncle’s house one evening when we had a BBQ. My other uncle was there, too, as was part of my immediate family and my cousin. Since my Heritage Bundt Pan produces a pretty huge cake, I figured I’d only need to bring half of it with me, but I never got around to cutting it and brought the whole thing. As it turned out, nearly 7/8ths of the whole cake was gone – despite the fact that a few members of the family are trying to avoid sugar! Too tempting, I guess. :)

The flavors here came out really nicely. They layered together well with just an undertone of vanilla, a hint of caramel at the edges from using the natural sugar, and then the headiness of almond and bergamot (which you’ll recognize as what makes Earl Grey tea taste as it does). I finished this moist cake with a drizzle of a nice quality melted dark chocolate – I used a bar of Dagoba I’d gotten as a gift.

*Note: If you do not have the required bergamot extract, you can infuse the milk with Earl Grey tea for a similar result.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups butter
6 eggs
3 cups whole wheat flour (this is what I had on hand – you can use white whole wheat or split between whole wheat and all purpose)
2 cups natural sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon bergamot extract
2/3 cup yogurt (I used one 5.3 oz cup)
1/3 cup milk
1/2-3/4 bar of good dark chocolate, about 1-1.5 oz (optional)
handful of slivered almonds, toasted (optional)

Directions

Grease and flour a 10-cup bundt or tube pan. Do not preheat the oven.

In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Add vanilla, almond, and bergamot extracts.

Add flour mixture to the cream mixture, alternately with yogurt. Add milk. Beat until smooth. Pour batter into the prepared tube or Bundt pan. Place pan on a tray to prevent overflow in the oven.

Place cake into cold oven, set the temperature to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for 60 to 90 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. (This took me about 60 minutes, but your mileage may vary depending on how long your oven takes to heat up.) Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes before turning it out onto a cooling rack.

In a double boiler or CAREFULLY in the microwave (don’t burn it!), melt the chocolate. Cut the tip off a small plastic sandwich bag. Spoon in the melted chocolate, and drizzle lines back and forth over the cake. Decorate with almond slivers if desired. Let the chocolate set before serving.

Chocolate Ganache

Image is of a wisk in a bowl of chocolate ganache.

I make chocolate ganache often enough now that I figured I should dedicate a whole post to it. It will be short (and sweet!) for now, but I may come back to this in a few days to report back after I use up some leftovers on truffles.

This particular post finally got put up due to my Chocolate Orange Christmas Bundt, but you can use it for all sorts of delicious chocolatey fun.

Nearly every ganache recipe I’ve seen is very, very similar, but I’ll link you to Joy of Baking because it’s got some helpful hints and tips on there, like that you should ideally use a chocolate with less than 58% cacao in it for textural reasons.

But look. Joy of Baking does butter in their ganache. I usually don’t. And then there’s all kinds of confusing crap between cups and ounces when we’re talking chocolate. But in my experience, if you take an average sized bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips (they’re usually about 10oz) and put that to a cup of cream, you’ll get a good ganache going. I’ve made it work with a little less. I’ve made it work with a little more. I’ve mixed bittersweet and semi-sweet. And the one time it all went wrong, it still tasted pretty darn good. Experiment a little.

Ingredients

9 ounces bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon dark rum (optional)

Directions

Chop the chocolate into small pieces and place it in a large stainless steel bowl.

In a large, high sided saucepan, heat cream over medium high heat, stirring frequently, until it starts to boil. Watch it carefully to ensure that it does not boil over. Remove immediately from heat and pour over the chopped chocolate.

Wisk the chocolate and cream together until the chocolate is completely melted and mixture is smooth.

For poured ganache, allow the mixture to cool slightly, then pour over the cake.

For whipped ganache, allow the mixture to cool at room temperature for about two hours, then use a stand mixer to whip the attachment into a fluffy frosting.

Store ganache in refrigerator.

Raspberry Curd Filled Cupcakes

It’s a busy birthday time around here, so I made my dad some birthday cake, too. I’d been planning to check out this awesome marscarpone frosting recipe that I saw on a baking community, but I was short on time and the first store I went to didn’t have marscarpone. What I did have (which I’d been planning to use with the marscarpone) was a bunch of lovely raspberries, and I wanted to put them to use somehow.

Generally, I make a cake when it comes to my parents, but since I had to run out to somewhere, I didn’t have time to leave a cake in the oven for that long. Cupcakes it was!

I started to play around with the idea of a filled cupcake, and I imagined different ideas for the raspberries. I settled on making a raspberry curd, which maybe wasn’t the best idea because I could only find a very small strainer, so it was an extremely comical process to filter out all the seeds… but, it came out really delicious and very raspberry tasting.

I have three brothers, and the middle brother, Matt, happened to be home from college the night that I made these. He called me a few days later and told me that the diner near his college was offering a chocolate raspberry cake free with your dinner. He said that he got excited about it because he knew he liked the combination.

“Let me tell you,” he said. “After eating your cake, the cake they gave me was such a letdown.”

*grin*

Ingredients (for Raspberry Curd)

1 heaping cup raspberries
3/4 cup sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 stick unsalted butter
Pinch of salt

Directions

Mash the raspberries with a fork.

In a small saucepan on low-medium heat, add all the ingredients together. Gradually raise the temperature to medium heat (you want to avoid cooking the eggs straightaway). Stir the mixture together for 8-10 minutes. Remove from heat. Pour through a strainer to remove seeds. Cover with heatproof plasticwrap (make sure it touches the surface) or put into clean jars and refrigerate. The curd will thicken as it cools.

To prepare the cupcakes, first bake your favorite vanilla cupcake recipe. Let them cool completely. If you’ve never filled cupcakes before, there’s a good tutorial here showing a few different ways. I used the cone method.

Fill the cupcakes with the cooled raspberry curd. Top with a whipped chocolate ganache. (See Deep Dark Chocolate Cake if you need directions.) Garnish with a raspberry.

Cupcake Sliders & Cookie Fries

I have absolutely neglected this blog lately, and for that I am sorry! As I probably mentioned, September I spent almost all of my baking time testing cake for our dear friends’ wedding because I wanted it to be just right. It was a success! I haven’t gotten any pictures back yet, but when I do, I’ll be sure to share them.

Last week, my youngest brother came to me and told me that he needed to bring in cupcakes for his class for his upcoming 12th birthday, and he wanted my help. He told me that one of the moms from his class actually had a gourmet cupcake business, and so everyone had been super impressed when they’d brought red velvet cupcakes for the class.

We started talking about what my brother likes. We talked about doing colossal mocha brownies, or pumpkin blondies, or tiny pies. Then we talked about things that were more like novelty items, like cake pops. I showed him Bakerella’s site with all the fancy cake pops on there. Then, I remembered something that Bakerella had posted a while back. Something they called Fast Food Fun.

“I know what to do,” I told my brother, and I pulled up the photos. The idea is to make a little “hamburger” brownie, on a cupcake “bun” and serve it with sugar cookie “french fries.”

My brother thought it was just about the most awesome thing in the world. I hardly ever use box mixes, but I told him that if we were going to be making brownies, cupcakes, cookies, AND decorating, we were going to use mixes.

We got little red and white paper trays at a party store to serve the treats in, and before he came home from school one afternoon, I prepared a family size box of brownies in a disposable pan. I made about 30 cupcakes out of a mix that’s supposed to make two dozen, figuring that if they were a little short, it would be more realistic, and he’d have a few more to go around. I doctored the cake mix a bit, adding some cinnamon (to make it look like it was flecked with grains) and some citrusy and vanilla extracts to bump the flavors up a bit. I waited until my brother got home to do the cookies so that he’d be involved in the baking process.

We cut slice & bake cookies into strips, and then cut them again when they were still cooling to get them into thin, french fry shapes. It was a bit painstaking, but not as painstaking as making rolled sugar cookies would have been, since you know how I love doing that.

Finally, it was time for the exciting part. We cut the cupcakes in half. We mixed the store-bought frosting with gel food coloring to make mustard, ketchup, and lettuce. We filled my piping bags, and we went to town!

Here I am pretending to pipe so my mom could take some photos. That’s my brother’s hand sneaking in there to put some bun tops on, but he’s a little young for me to be plastering pictures of him all over the internet. (Give him a few years and he can do that for himself!)

We finished up by brushing the tops of the cupcakes with water and sprinkling sesame seeds on the top. Here’s one of the finished trays:

I think one of the funniest things about this is that I haven’t eaten a real hamburger in about 17 years. (I’ve had veggie burgers, of course, but I haven’t eaten beef in that long.)

We put them in a giant cake box for easy transport.

They really do look like we’re serving sliders!

This was a super fun project. Thanks to Bakerella for the idea!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies (Veg*n)

[I started this the other day, but didn't get a chance to post it! Cookies are baked and shipped!] One of my younger brothers is a music education major, and this summer, he’s teaching music at a summer camp on the left coast. I got an email from my mom last week saying that he’d requested a care package “including cookies,” and my mom asked if I felt like baking some.

Chocolate chippers are usually my go-to cookie when it comes to giving them to people, since almost everyone loves a good chocolate chip cookie, but seeing as I’m in the NYC area, and my brother is currently in California, and the heat has been reaching triple digits, I figured that mailing anything with chocolate chips would end up looking pretty sad.

My mom suggested that my brother liked sugar cookies, and although I hate hate hate rolling out sugar cookies, I’ve been feeling a bit more adventurous lately and decided to give it a go. So far this morning, they’ve been a complete failure, but I will try to win again later.

The other cookie that I thought would be a hit with my brother are these chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies. I rarely make them because they (similar to rolling out sugar cookies and then decorating them) are labor intensive. The end result, however, is very cool.

To make these cookies, you first make a chocolate cookie dough (this one happens to be vegan), and then, separately, you make a simple peanut butter filling. The labor intensive part comes next, where you sit at your kitchen table for a looooong time, smushing little discs of chocolate dough, putting a little ball of peanut butter filling in the center, then carefully wrapping the chocolate cookie dough around it. If you work carefully, there will be no trace of the peanut butter on the outside, and only when the person bites into the cookie will they discover the peanut butter filling (just make sure you don’t serve these to someone with nut allergies!).

This recipe is floating around the internet from a million different sources. I don’t have it memorized, so I had a look at the one here before modifying it a bit.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup black cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup Earth Balance
1/4 cup vegetable shortening (you can use all Earth Balance, but I was mailing these and wanted something a little less prone to melting)
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy milk
1 egg replacer
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup chocolate chips (optional – I left them out this time because I was mailing them in during summer)

Directions

In a medium bowl, mix flour, cocoa powder, black cocoa, and baking soda.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together the Earth Balance, shortening, sugar, and brown sugar. When combined, mix in the egg replacer.

Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix.

In a separate small bowl, mix the powdered sugar and peanut butter with a spoon or your hands. (I find that your hands work best here, otherwise it will just turn into small crumbs of peanut buttery powdered sugar, and you really want them thoroughly mixed into a paste.) When ingredients are incorporated, add the chocolate chips (if desired) and knead further with your hands to incorporate the chocolate chips.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Take about a 2 tablespoons of the chocolate dough in your hand, and roll into a ball. Flatten the ball on the parchment paper to form a disk. Take a pinch (or about 1 teaspoon) of the peanut butter mixture and place in the center of the disk. Fold the edges of the disk up and over the peanut butter, pressing the seams together. Place the cookie seam-side down on the parchment paper to bake.

Bake for 8-12 minutes in a preheated 350°F oven. Cool on wire baking racks.

Chocolate Cola Cupcakes

For Christmas, Charlie got me both of the Baked books after I’d ooohed and ahhhed over them in Barnes and Noble one day. I’ve tried out one or two of the recipes (let me say right now that I cannot wait to make Aunt Sassy Cake), but since I often make up my own recipes or have other folks request something that they’ve already had, it’s tough for me to follow something exactly from a book.

I’ll start out by mentioning that we really don’t drink soda. I am one of those people who is morally opposed to high fructose corn syrup (there! I’ve said it!) for many reasons (feel free to email me if you want to see me on a soapbox), but Charlie had to run an event for his job the other week, and we ended up with some soda at home. We donated most of it to another event, but there were a few rogue cans that got left behind.

I remembered seeing a recipe that had root beer in it in one of the Baked books, so I hunted it down. They wanted root beer, and I had coke, so that was the first change I made. The second change I made was, as usual, to reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe, but other than that, I pretty much stuck to it.

This recipe is based off of the Root Beer Bundt Cake from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. They came out really good, though they didn’t have too much of a soda flavor. I expected it to be not-too-pronounced since it was coke and not root beer, but I think I may try the recipe again and try the tip that they included: If you can find root beer schnapps, replace 1/2 cup of the root beer in the cake with root beer schnapps for a more pronounced taste.

**I’m giving away a neat set of measuring spoons! Check out the giveaway here!

Ingredients: Cake
2 cups cola or root beer (do not use diet)
1 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder (I used KAF’s black cocoa)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs

Ingredients: Frosting

2 ounces chocolate (the recipe called for 60% cacao, but I shockingly only had semi-sweet, and it turned out just fine)
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup of whichever soda you chose above
2/3 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line cupcake tin with papers. (This recipe was originally made for a 10 inch Bundt pan. If using a Bundt pan, generously spray the inside of the pan with nonstick cooking spray or butter it, dust it with flour, and knock out the excess flour.

in a small saucepan, heat the root beer, cocoa powder, and butter over medium heat until the butter is melted. Add the sugars and whisk until dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together.

In small bowl, whisk the eggs until just beginning. Add a small amount of the cooled cocoa mixture to the beaten eggs to ensure that they are tempered. Combine the two mixtures and whisk. Gently fold the flour mixture into the cocoa mixture. The batter will be slightly lumpy–do not over be, as it could cause the cake to be tough.

Pour the batter into the prepared cupcake tins and bake for 15 to 22 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. If using a Bundt pan, bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

To make the frosting, put all the ingredients in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until the frosting is shiny and smooth.

You may use a piping bag to frost cupcakes or simply use a spatula to spread the frosting on the cupcakes and/or on the bundt. Let the frosting set before serving. For a cute decorating twist, cut straws to be shorter, then stick them into the cupcakes. Serve with ice cream if desired.

Tate’s Bake Shop Giveaway Winner! (& Chocolate Chip Cake)

Thanks to everyone who entered the giveaway for a Tate’s Bake Shop cookbook and gift box of cookies!

I used random.org to pick a winner from the comments that made it in before midnight last night, and our winner was Anash! Anash, I’ll be emailing you to get your information so that we can send you your goodies. If I don’t hear back within 72 hours, we’ll have to pick a new winner.

If you weren’t the winner this time, don’t forget that Tate’s Bake Shop is generously offering Measuring Spoons readers a 15% discount off anything in their web store for the rest of April. Enter the code “cookies1″ at checkout to take advantage of this discount.

I’m loving the Tate’s Bake Shop Cookbook that I got. The other day, we had a bunch of friends over, and I whipped up Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cake. It’s simple and delicious, and you don’t need an icing. Thanks again, Tate’s!

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup salted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
4 large eggs
2 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup sour cream
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13×9 inch pan. Set it aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Set it aside.

In a bowl with an electric mixer, cream the butter till it’s light and creamy, about 4 minutes. Add the sugars and mix well. Add the vanilla and mix. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing them well and scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition.

Removed 1/4 cup of the flour mixture and toss it with the chocolate chips in a separate bowl. This keeps the chips from sinking to the bottom of the cake. Set it aside.

Add the remaining flour mixture alternately with the sour cream in three stages, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix in the heavy cream. Stir in the chocolate chip mixture.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and spread it evenly.

Bake the cake for 55 minutes or until a cake tester or toothpick comes out clean.

Yield: 16 servings.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cake

Thanks to my Uncle Dan for this great photo!

Cakes are not usually my thing.

I make a good cookie, a tasty muffin, and a damn good brownie, but I usually don’t put the time and energy into making awesome cakes. Sometimes I’ll make cupcakes, but whole cakes with fancy frosting, definitely not. They’re just not easy to cut up and pass out, and in a small household, we’re not going to eat a whole cake.

But a few weeks ago, I sent my mom a simple, one-line email asking her if Christmas Eve dinner was going to be at her house as usual. It’s a tradition that the immediate family gets together the night before the holiday so that everyone can spend some time together and open presents before everyone has to travel on Christmas.

My mom sent me back about five paragraphs about how hectic the week was. This brother had to be picked up from college out of state, that brother was coming home on this day, the next day we were doing that, and, since my mom is a social worker, she had to actually work on Christmas Eve. So, she said, she wasn’t sure when she was going to have the time to cook.

Since just reading her email was stressing me out, and I didn’t even have to DO any of the stuff that she had to do, I suggested that Charlie and I be in charge of cooking. My sister ended up getting involved, and my brother who just graduated college was around and helped, and even my littlest brother, who is 11, felt pretty important with some of the things he was tasked with (like helping me make lasagna) that day.

But almost more important than the actual dinner was the dessert. My family loves chocolate. They think I’m the weirdest kid around for preferring more delicate flavors like fruits, teas, or vanilla. I made sure to prepare something I’d enjoy, but I also knew I had to really bring it in terms of dessert.

I recently bought some black cocoa from King Arthur Flour, and I wanted that to make an appearance in the dessert I made, and it ended up in the cake itself.

This dessert looks complicated, and my family thought it was downright professional, but when you break it down into steps, it isn’t that difficult.

• Chocolate cake (based very loosely off of a Texas Sheet Cake) made with black cocoa
• Raspberry jam filling
• Whipped semi-sweet chocolate ganache
• Poured darker chocolate ganache

This was my first time making ganache, and it went very well. I also made sure that this cake wasn’t too sweet so that I was really featuring the richness of the cream, the depth of the chocolate, and the layers of the chocolate.

P.S. The Art & Baking Giveaway is open until Friday, so hop over there for a chance to win!

Ingredients
1 cup of butter
2 cup of all purpose flour
3/4 cup of white sugar
1/2 tsp of salt
3 tbsp of tablespoons cocoa
3 tbsp of black cocoa
1 cup of boiling water
1/2 cup of buttermilk
2 eggs
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of vanilla
3/4 cup of raspberry jam

For the whipped ganache:
1 cup of heavy cream
8 ounce of semi-sweet chocolate

For the poured ganache:
1 cup of heavy cream
10 ounce of 65% dark chocolate

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Prepare a 12″ x 17″ sheet pan by greasing the edges of it and putting a piece of parchment paper, trimmed to size, in the bottom.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt.

In a small pot, melt the butter.

Add the cocoa, and mix into the butter. Add the boiling water. Let boil for a few seconds, then turn off the heat. Pour the cocoa mixture over the flour mixture and stir slightly. In a separate small bowl, mix the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda, and vanilla. Stir the buttermilk mixture into the cocoa mixture.

Pour into the prepared sheet cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Immediately when the cake has come out of the oven, flip the cake out onto another piece of parchment paper and peel back the parchment paper from the bottom. Let cool.

When the cake is completely cool, cut into four even pieces. Use a pastry brush to paint the layers on all sides with raspberry jam.

Next, make the whipped semi-sweet ganache. In a double boiler over medium heat, bring 1 cup of cream almost to a boil. Turn off the heat and stir the semi-sweet chocolate into the cream. Mix until smooth.

Set this mixture aside to cool at room temperature for about two hours. When cool, use a stand mixture to whip into a frosting. Stack the layers of the cake, then spread the whipped ganache around the outside of the cake.

Repeat the process of heating the second cup of cream, this time, using the dark chocolate.

When the mixture is smooth, let it cool and thicken for about three to five minutes, so that it is almost the consistency of honey. Then, pour the mixture over the frosted cake. (It will run over the sides, so you’ll want a pan underneath to catch it!)

Let the ganache set. Keep refrigerated until serving. Decorate as desired. (I used a thin glaze of confectioner’s sugar and edible glitter.)

Darling Clementines

Darling Clementines are a holiday cookie that I’ve been making for a few years now. They’re also one of the recipes I made for the cookie contest that we participated in over on Scrawl Zoom Stir. They combine seasonal clementines, sliced almonds, and dark chocolate for a beautiful treat. For a gorgeous, green holiday gift, package these in an upcycled clementines crate.

When I brought these to dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house a week or two before Christmas, my aunt actually cried out, “Oh my god,” when she tasted them. Definitely a lovely mix of flavors.

This is a vegan version of this cookie, but I’ve made it with butter and eggs before and it comes out perfectly either way.

While you’re here, don’t forget to check out the giveaway that I’m doing of a neat baking related art print!

Ingredients

1/2 cup of Earth Balance (or butter)
1/4 cup of vegetable shortening
1/2 cup of packed brown sugar
1/2 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 tsp of commercial egg replacer (or one large egg)
2 tbsp of water
1 whole (seedless) clementine, pulverized in food processor
1 zest of whole clementine
1/2 tsp of vanilla
3 cup of sifted all-purpose flour
1 tbsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of salt
1 tsp of ground cardamom seed
4 ounce of bittersweet chocolate
1/3 cup of sliced almonds

Directions

Cream Earth Balance, shortening, and sugar together in a stand mixer. In a separate small bowl, mix the egg replacer with the water until frothy. Add the egg replacer and vanilla to the mixing bowl and stir. Add the pulverized clementine and clementine zest, mixing well.

In a separate medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cardamom, and salt. Mix well. Add to the clementine mixture and mix well.

Chill dough until firm. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Form 1″ balls of dough. Press sliced almonds onto the tops of each ball. Bake on a parchment lined baking sheet for 12-14 minutes.

Cool on racks. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate. Set the cookies on wax paper, then drizzle the chocolate over the top. Let the chocolate completely set before serving.

Dressmaker’s Double Stout Cookies

I don’t even like chocolate cookies, and I like these.

The “double” in the name is for double chocolate – chocolate cookie, chocolate chips. I also made them twice in the last week, which is really unusual for me. Generally, I like to experiment with new and unusual varieties of recipes, so for a nearly identical version of a recipe to turn up in the house more than once in a short period of time is almost unheard of. (The only exception to this is my go-to brownie recipe since I can throw it together super quickly and everyone loves it.)

Charlie only got to taste a few of these cookies during the first round, since batch number one was a gift for an old employer of mine (a dressmaker, which is where the name comes from), and most of the leftovers went home with my brother, Jon, who was around when I was making them. Charlie and I had a few friends over for a non-poker card night (games like Spoons, Bullshit, Egyptian Ratscrew, Asshole, and Fluxx are on our agenda), and I decided to whip them up again (though I substituted a Shipyard Pumpkin Ale instead of the Lion’s Stout). Charlie said he was so glad I made them again right away because sometimes I make something he really loves and then he has to wait for ages for it to come back into circulation again! They were a huge hit with our friends that came over, and I spread the goodness around a bit further by sharing some with my sister and my art teacher.

I’m generally a fan of the “puffy” cookie when I’m baking, but when it comes to chocolate chocolate chip, I definitely think chewy is the way to go. I’d acquired some bulk vital wheat gluten when we were at our friend’s hippie co-op in Massachusetts a few weeks ago, so I added extra into the recipe to make them really chewy, and the texture was awesome.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway of that darling teapot! Details are here.

Jon helped me with the dishes and “helped” with this photo…

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten*
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 12 oz can of Lion’s Stout (or other dark stout)
1/2 a bag of dark chocolate chips, give or take

*If you don’t have vital wheat gluten, it’s not the end of the world. It just makes the cookies chewier (and even add a little protein!). Another option for making chewier cookies is to substitute bread flour for all-purpose flour. The cookies will still be delicious, chocolatey stout cookies without either of those changes.

Directions

First things first. Start your stout simmering in a small saucepan on the stove on low heat… that’s going to take a while. You want to reduce it until it’s a syrup-y consistancy. Make sure that you check on it occasionally and stir it. At the beginning, it may be inclined to form a “head” like when you pour beer into a glass, except way more extreme, so keep an eye on it or it will be all over your stove.

Cream together the butter and the brown sugar and the white sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer, or in a large bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing as you go. Add the vanilla extract after that and give it a good stir. Check on the stout.

In a separate medium bowl, combine the flour, vital wheat gluten, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. Stir them with a wisk (since I never bother to sift my flour) to get the big lumps out.

Check on the stout. If it’s not looking very much reduced, turn up the heat a little, but watch it even more closely. (While I was writing this, my laptop was directly next to the stove with my trusty wooden spoon in between to stir it up if needed.) You’ll notice that the stout starts to coat the bottom of the pan when it’s almost ready. The final amount of stout will be a little less than 1/4 cup. It will obviously be quite hot, so I pour it into a glass measuring cup and put that in an ice bath before putting it into the cookie dough mixture.

When the syrup is finally the proper consistency, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Mix the dry ingredients and the syrup into the creamed mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.

On a parchment lined baking sheet, drop tablespoons of the cookie dough. Bake for 10-14 minutes depending on your oven and your preference for softer or crispier cookies.

Cardamom Lime Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Yes, I admit it. I bake my own birthday cakes. (I should probably mention that I turned 26 this year, not 6, right?)

For some reason everyone always has a problem with this right up until they lift their forks up to their mouths, and then… well, then they sigh a little, and admit, “You’re right, you’re a baker, no one else here could have made this,” or some similar praise that puts me up on a pedestal.

I’m not a huge cake eater. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that I prefer ice cream above all other sweets, but I’d take a good cookie over cake. But, birthdays are birthdays, and for birthdays, there is cake. (If you’re wondering about my ridiculous decorations… I felt weird telling myself “Happy Birthday!” so instead I declared, “I Was Born!”)

My favorite cake is usually the classic yellow cake with chocolate frosting. When I go to a cupcake shop, like Billy’s Bakery on 9th Ave, that’s what I’ll get, perfectly topped with just a few adorable sprinkles. I wanted to make something nostalgic, but also something a bit more refined, something that showcased how I’d grown in the way that I use flavors. I started thinking about cardamom, with just a bit of lime zest… and finally a chocolate cream cheese frosting to match the tang of the lime.

I don’t bake regular old cakes very frequently, and I still don’t have a go-to recipe for yellow cake. I’ve tried Wilton’s, I’ve tried Betty Crocker’s, I’ve tried some random chick from the internet’s. This time, I tried the “Fluffy Yellow Cake” from America’s Test Kitchen. It was decent, but still not exactly what I was looking for, and it would have been far too sweet had I not (as always) reduced the sugar.

Another thing to note about me is that I almost never bake cakes that require separating eggs. It usually ends up being wasteful around here, but since I had plans for a Lemon Blueberry Chiffon Cake with a Lavender Glaze, my eggs actually worked out!

Cardamom Lime Cake – Ingredients

2 1/2 cups cake flour, plus extra for dusting pans
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon table salt
1 cup sugar
10 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly
1 cup milk, room temperature
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons cardamom
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon lime zest
6 large egg yolks, room temperature
3 large egg whites, room temperature

Cardamom Lime Cake – Directions

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a giant round cake pan if you’re going to make the ridiculous thing that I did, otherwise, this will make two 9″ pans. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar together in large bowl. In medium bowl, whisk together melted butter, milk, oil, vanilla, and yolks.

In clean bowl of stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, beat egg whites at medium-high speed until foamy, about 30 seconds. Continue to beat until stiff peaks just form, 30 to 60 seconds (whites should hold peak but mixture should appear moist). Transfer to bowl and set aside.

Add flour mixture to now-empty mixing bowl fitted with whisk attachment. With mixer running at low speed, gradually pour in butter mixture and mix until almost incorporated (a few streaks of dry flour will remain), about 15 seconds. Stop mixer and scrape whisk and sides of bowl. Return mixer to medium-low speed and beat until smooth and fully incorporated, 10 to 15 seconds.

Using rubber spatula, stir 1/3 of whites into batter to lighten, then add remaining whites and gently fold into batter until no white streaks remain. Divide batter evenly between prepared cake pans. Lightly tap pans against counter 2 or 3 times to dislodge any large air bubbles.

Bake until cake layers begin to pull away from sides of pans and toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 22 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Loosen cakes from sides of pans with small knife, then invert onto greased wire rack. Invert cakes again and cool completely on rack, about 1 1/2 hours.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting – Ingredients

Well, Bo woke up before I did on the day of the party, so he got started on the frosting. I can’t be sure exactly what ratios were used, only that it was based off of my Maple Cream Cheese Frosting recipe that he found on here, haha, and that when I did wake up, I kept saying, “I want a darker chocolate.”

So, I’m guessing that it was something like…

1 stick unsalted butter
8 oz cream cheese
1/2-3/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup confectioners sugar

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting – Directions

Make someone else get up earlier than you on the day of your party. Have them dump all the ingredients in the stand mixer and have at it until smooth. If desired, add more confectioners sugar or more cocoa powder. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before frosting.

Beer Pie (with Pecans & Walnuts)

I joined an online baking community recently, and it is awesome to see what everyone around the world is baking. Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up here in the USA, someone suggested making a beer pie. I made a bunch of changes to the recipe, like adding chocolate and walnuts, but it was a great help to have since I’ve never made a pecan pie before. Charlie loves pecan pie, though, and he said that this was one of the best things I’ve ever made. It did not last very long!

I went to our local beverage store, and I asked for a recommendation on a good stout, since that’s not what I usually drink. I was hoping to get something like Leffe Brune, but I was told that it’s only available in Belgium, which is where I sampled it. He asked me if I wanted Guinness, and I said that I wanted something with a chocolaty finish, so he pointed me to Lion Stout, a brew from Sri Lanka. I tried a sip before I put it in the pie, and it was perfect – very dark and flavorful.

As usual, I cut back on the sugar a bit, so this pie really tastes like like the chocolaty stout (so much so that I wouldn’t recommend serving this at a family event).

Ingredients

1 unbaked 9″ pie crust (I cheated here and used a frozen one from the store)
12 ounces Lions Stout (or any other dark, sweet stout)
2 tbsp Butter
1 cup light corn syrup
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup pecan halves
1 cup walnuts
3 eggs
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/3 cup dark chocolate chips
egg wash (if desired)
pecans for garnish

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Pour beer into a pan and heat on medium. Reduce to a syrup-ish consistency, then let it cool slightly.

Melt the butter in a separate pan.

Combine the reduced beer with the melted butter, corn syrup, brown sugar, and flour with a wire whisk until thoroughly blended. Add the walnuts and pecans.

In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add a small amount of the warm syrup mixture to the eggs before stirring the eggs into the syrup mixture. (This evens out the temperatures so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs in your warm syrup.)

If desired, brush the crust with your egg wash.

Pour the filling into the crust, mixing in the chocolate chips as you pour. Garnish with pecans.

Bake in the center of the oven on a baking tray in case of spills! for approximately 40 minutes or until a knife stuck in the center comes out clean.

Cool before serving.

Knee Surgery Pie (Chocolate & Berries)

It’s probably a little late in the day for me to post a Valentine’s Day suggestion recipe, but you never know. Maybe you’re having a late, late dinner, or celebrating a day late. I’m not really into V-day – my partner and I had some cuddles and got his mom flowers.

This recipe is one from the archives. In fact, this is the first recipe that I recorded in my journal, and decided that I’d keep my recipes online, and really, was the start of my food blogging before I did actual food blogging.

It’s for Valentine’s day because I stenciled hearts on it, and because it’s very decadent, and because when I had knee surgery is when I started getting shmoopy with Charlie. (The two year anniversary of us and my knee surgery is next month.)

The great thing about this recipe, if you’re cooking a dinner for Valentine’s day, you can use a pre-baked crust from the store, and make the pudding on the stove while all your other dishes are going on, which is a little easier than trying to measure flour, user your stand mixer, and all that jazz, while you’re stirring stuff and checking on the roast in the oven.

So, while this could be something that was totally from scratch and took a while, it could also be something that was thrown together in a relatively quick amount of time and was really, really impressive. Don’t be a stickler for the type of fruit you use – February can be a difficult time to get really beautiful fruit, so if strawberries look better than raspberries, go with them, and so on. Pick the berries that look the best, but try your hardest to get fresh, not frozen. Frozen is a last resort.

Here is the original text from my entry:

I’ve decided I’m going to start recording my recipes/cooking excursions in here, because I always make notes on the actual printed recipe and then lose it, and just get it off the internet again… so here we go!

Today I baked a pie that I was thinking about after watching that movie “Waitress.”

The layers went like this:

• prebaked pie crust (from scratch)
• layer of melted bittersweet chocolate, painted on the bottom and sides
• layer of crumb topping
• layer of crushed raspberries and blackberries
• layer of chocolate filling (sort of pudding like)
• rings of fresh berries (& optional decorative confectioner’s sugar)

The main problem I recall having with this recipe was getting the filling to thicken.

Ingredients

1 single layer pre-baked pie crust (either store bought or Charlie’s Consistent Win Pie Crust

Chocolate Lining:
2oz bittersweet chocolate

Berry Filling:
2 pints blackberries (half reserved for decoration)
2 pints raspberries (half reserved for decoration
1-2 teaspoons white sugar

Crumb Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons butter, diced
Sprinkle of cinnamon

Chocolate Filling:
1/4 cup butter
1 cup white sugar + 2 tablespoons
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 egg yolks
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
a little bit of cornstarch in case of emergency

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

First, crush a pint of raspberries and a pint of blackberries slightly to release some of the juices. Taste the berries to see how sweet they are, then stir them with the 1-2 teaspoons of sugar. Let this mixture sit out while you prepare the rest of the pie.

Next, prepare the chocolate filling. In a cast iron skillet, if available, or other heavy bottomed pan, over medium low heat, melt the butter or margarine.

Combine one cup of the sugar with cocoa and flour. Beat the egg yolks with the milk and add them to the sugar mixture. Add the sugar and egg mixture to the skillet with the melted butter and cook gently, stirring constantly until thick. (Watch this mixture closely as it has a tendency to burn!) Add the vanilla.

When I first made this at the very beginning of my culinary adventures, I had trouble making the chocolate filling thicken. If this happens, don’t panic. What I did was add a thickening agent, like cornstarch, and it worked out just fine. I haven’t tried to make it again since then, so I’m not sure if it was the way I was cooking it or the recipe! But – in case of emergency – there’s your fix. But also – this pie does better if it sits in the refrigerator for the correct amount of time, so if you’re not going to have enough time to refrigerate, you’re going to want the cornstarch. If you have time to refrigerate overnight, you can be satisfied with a slightly less set filling.

Make your crumb filling by mixing the flour and sugar together in a bowl, then cutting the butter in with two knives, a fork, or a pastry blender just until the topping is crumbly.

Melt the bittersweet chocolate in a double boiler and paint it with a spatula along the bottom and inside edges of the crust. Let this cool.

Pour the berry filling into the bottom of the pie crust with the chocolate shell.

Pack in the crumb topping on top of the berry filling. This layer will help serve as a barrier between the two chocolates so that they don’t just melt together in the oven!

Pour in the chocolate filling. Do not overfill the crust.

Bake the pie at 350 for 10-15 minutes.

Remove pie from oven and let cool on counter for 20 minutes. Decorate with berries around the edges, and if desired, stencil confectioner’s sugar hearts on the pie. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or overnight.

Chewy UK Flapjacks (That is, NOT Pancakes)

Flapjacks are not pancakes, at least not in the UK. They’re more like a soft, chewy granola bar that’s cut into big, brownie sized bars. They’re super addictive and I was hooked on them when I lived in London. Whole Foods had particularly good ones that mixed in all sorts of nuts and seeds and berries or currants or whatever, though plain ones are tasty, too.

We’re going camping this weekend with a bunch of our friends, and some sort of trail mix seemed like a good idea. Granola bars or flapjacks are sort of like trail mix in a convenient form, and it gave me an excuse to make the delicious stuff I’d been missing for an entire year.

These are very easy to make, but the ingredients are important. Golden syrup is not corn syrup. It’s made out of cane sugar, from what I understand. I couldn’t get the exact product that I was looking for, but I did get Alaga syrup which is a blend of corn syrup and cane sugar, so it’s much closer to what I was looking for. The internet also tells me that you can use two parts corn syrup and one part molasses if you’re totally desperate.

Also, you’re going to want the oats that cook in ONE minute, not five or forever. As usual, I’ve reduced the sweetness a bit.

Mine came out rather good, a bit crumbly, and I think they still didn’t have quite the same golden syrup taste, so I may have to hunt around a bit to try to get some. They were still quite delicious, though.

Ingredients

1 pound oats (one minute quick oats)
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 sticks unsalted butter or soybutter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (optional)
1/4 cup sunflower seeds (optional)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 325 for a softer, chewier flapjack, 350 for a crispier flapjack.

Line a 13″x9″ pan with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mix the oats, flour, salt, and sunflower seeds.

In a large pot, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the golden syrup and sugar and stir until the butter is melted and the sugar is fully dissolved.

Pour the mixture over the oats and stir until the oats have been coated. Stir in the chocolate chips, then plop the mixture into the pre-lined pan. Press the mixture down with a spoon or spatula to compress it tightly.

Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cut into squares and cool completely.

Mocha Pillow Cookies

We have a guest baker on the blog today! (Actually this transpired a few weeks ago, but I’ve been terrible about getting it posted.) Our friend Jack just moved to NYC, and one of the first things we decided that we should do was to have a baking party. Our other friend, and Jack’s “person,” Eli, came over, too, as Eli was visiting from so we had a couples baking night.

Jack (left) works at a coffee shop, so ze* brought us some espresso to make some yummy mocha cookies. Ze also brought me a nonfat vanilla iced latte with just a tiny bit of syrup, just the way I like it! Thanks, Jack. Eli is the helper on the right.

These cookies came out extremely soft and fluffy. They were like little mocha pillows. A word to the wise, though… As delicious as these cookies are, don’t get carried away eating them before bed. We did, and between that and the excitement of our visit we didn’t get to bed until six in the morning. Ridiculous!

Ingredients

1/4 of dutch cocoa
2 2/3 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup white sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla, or a little more
2 egg whites and 1 whole egg (this happened because we were baking a cake, too, and had some extra whites – feel free to just use two whole eggs)
2 cups dark chocolate chips (though we made some without chocolate chips, too)
6 shots of espresso

Directions


Preheat oven to 350° F. 

Combine flour, baking soda, cocoa, and salt in small bowl.

Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla and espresso and stir.

Add flour a little at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl. When all the flour is mixed in, stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by big spoonfuls onto parchment paper.

Bake about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on wire racks.

*Ze is a gender neutral pronoun. If you’re just not sure how they fit into parts of speech, there’s a chart here. If you want to read more about the what/why/how, feel free to email me, or, (as much as I hate to use wikipedia as a reference, there’s currently some good information on there), you can view the Wikipedia page on gender neutral pronouns here.