Baking Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Patent & the Pantry

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

August 30, 2011 6 Comments

The problem with getting behind in blogging is you start to forget why you made something in the first place.

OK, that might not be a problem others have. This may be particular to me.

I think I came up with the idea of making a Chocolate Lime Cheesecake while flipping through cookbooks one night and remembering this had been on my to-do list for eons. I’m almost sure I had pulled Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites from my (overstuffed) shelf looking for one of her salad recipes when I re-stumbled across this one. And it occurred to me, since it was a long weekend and I was going to be working on the stat holiday, that I should bake this up and bring it in to the rest of the Calgary Herald crew working on the holiday Monday just like I used to when I was over in the city section. (Back then, I worked Sundays every week and I often baked and brought in goodies for what became known as Civilized Sundays, which would see us sitting around at 10 a.m. eating cake and listening to the police scanner. And reading our horoscopes.)

Then, and I do remember this correctly, I told the people who I knew would be also working that I was going to bake a cheesecake, which actually made me do it.

And, man, am I glad I did.

Nigella, my friends, she knows her stuff.

You know I love lime. It’s no surprise I also like chocolate. These two together are a very nice, very unexpected treat.

It may seem a bit fussy, but I followed all the instructions, including baking it in a water bath, which is a relatively common suggestion for baking cheesecake (a gentler way that theoretically keeps the top from cracking but always seemed like an unnecessary additional step). And I think it is indeed worth it. And the trick of snapping the aluminum foil into the springform pan (which sounds more confusing than it actually is) really does protect the crust and cake from any water.

However, I must also add that I bought extra-wide aluminum foil thanks to the suggestion of my friend, Colette, who knew such a thing existed. Thanks Col! That way there was no panic about making sure the various pieces were secure enough. I would recommend this as a great way of alleviating any concern over seepage.

Seepage. What an odd thing to be mentioning on a food blog.

And, goodness, this is a very scattered post, isn’t it?

To summarize: this cheesecake is tasty. I enjoyed it. So did my friends. Make it. Don’t wait as long as I did to do so.

End.

Chocolate Lime Cheesecake

Straight from Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites.

7 ounces chocolate wafer cookies
1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 pound cream cheese (recommended: Philadelphia)
1 cup sugar
4 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
4 limes, juiced or 3/4 cup

Special equipment: springform pan

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Place a large overlapping piece of aluminum foil over the bottom of the springform pan, and then insert pan ring over it. Fold the foil extra foil up and around the pan and place the whole thing on a second piece of foil, also folding it and pressing it securely around the pan, having a water tight covering.

In a food processor, process cookies until they are crumb-like, add melted butter and continue to process. Pour crumb mixture into springform pan and press with your fingers to line the pan. Place the pan in the refrigerator to set while you prepare the cheesecake.

Place a kettle of water on for water bath. In a food processor beat the cream cheese until smooth, add the sugar, eggs, egg yolks, and lime juice.

Take crumbed pan from the refrigerator and place it in a roasting pan. Pour the cheesecake mixture into the crumb pan, and then carefully pour the hot kettle of water into the roasting pan so the water reaches 1/2 way up the pan so the water does not splash into cheese cake.

Place roasting pan in oven for 1 hour, checking after 50 minutes. It should feel set, but still wobbly in the center. Take the roasting pan out of the oven, carefully remove the springform pan from the roasting pan and place it on a rack. Peel off the outer layer of foil, and tear away the side bits of the first layer of foil and leave the pan to cool. Once the cake comes to room temperature, place it in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving. Transfer to the plate you’re going to serve it on, a plate without a lip, or a cake stand. Unclip the springform pan and remove the outer part. Carefully lift the cheesecake removing the metal bottom. The aluminum foil can stay on the cake. Serve chilled.

Baking, Breakfast

Peach-blueberry muffins

August 22, 2011 12 Comments

Oh hey!

Just popping in with some bran muffins.

I know I’m a bit of a baking freak, but I think I reached new lows (highs?) when I baked these up yesterday in the 30-degree heat. But I had a flat of peaches and they’re all pretty much perfectly ripe at this exact moment and I need to come up with ways to use them before I have to toss them. The original plan was a streusel peach cake, or a rustic tart, but by the time I got back from brunch with a friend and did some other chores, it seemed a bit late to be putting together a cake. And pastry? Well, that’s probably not going to be great when your kitchen is that blazing hot. (Plus, you know, pastry. We’re not the best of friends. One day, I hope. One day.)

Anyway, I’ve been making these peach bran muffins of Julie’s for awhile now. They’re what I think muffins should be. Healthy, full of good-for-you ingredients like bran and not too much sugar. Not those cake-in-disguise muffins, which I know are tasty, but really are just cupcakes with a different name.

I grew up eating Sunny Boy Muffins. Warm from the oven, cracked open with a little pat of butter. I can still taste them. (And this serves as a good reminder that I really need to track down some Sunny Boy; there is nothing like the taste of nostalgia.) So, I like a good, solid muffin. And these deliver.

I’ve made them several ways: with buttermilk, with plain yogurt thinned with some milk, with white sugar, with brown and with a mixture of the two. And here’s what I’ve decided: pretty much any way you go, these are good, hearty muffins. But, since I rarely have buttermilk on hand, I usually go with the yogurt-milk mix and I think I like the dual-sugar combination. Julie’s recipe calls for one peach, but I usually double that (or 1.5 that, if the peaches are really big) because I like the extra fruit. And this time around I added in some blueberries, which I just happened to have around. I’m sure other fruit would also be fantastic.

I like making muffins and cupcakes but an ongoing issue I have is that I appear to have some sort of miniature muffin tin. I mean, it looks all normal sized but whenever a recipe says it will make 12 muffins, I end up with anywhere between 16 and 20. At first, I thought it was just me and I was maybe not filling the tins enough. And then I realized it happens so consistently that I’m now pretty confident that it’s this tin. I can’t quite justify getting a new one, though.

All this to say, the recipe says it makes 12 muffins. I got 18 out of it, after dropping the cooking time almost in half. If your muffin tin runs on the small side and you have leftover batter after all the cups are filled, lower the cooking time to around the 13- or 14-minute mark. You can always bake them longer, but you don’t want to overbake them.

OK, go forth, make muffins. Enjoy.

Fresh Peach Bran Muffins

from Dinner With Julie.

2 cups All Bran cereal
1 3/4 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt, thinned with milk
1/2 cup sugar (white or brown)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
1 or 2 peaches, chopped (or additional fruit, as desired)

In a large bowl, stir together the cereal and buttermilk; let stand for 10 minutes, until soft. (Sometimes I drizzle in a bit more milk if this mixture seems really, overly solid. Never had any problems with a little additional liquid.) Preheat the oven to 375F.

Stir the sugar, oil and egg into the bran mixture. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add the peach and stir just until blended.

Divide the batter among 12 muffin cups that have been lined with paper liners or sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Makes a dozen muffins.

Baking, Desserts

Rhubarb Upside-down Cake

July 12, 2011 3 Comments

Before I get down to this (and, baby, this is well worth getting down to), a little apology and a tease of what’s going to be coming up on P&P. First, sorry for the delay in updating. Life, it has been hectic of late. That’s not a bad thing, except when it comes to keeping the blog a little more lively. But, my friends, I’ve got posts coming on my trip to Portland (hint: there are burgers. And they are t-a-s-t-y.), a scape pesto and some other goodies.

So, thanks for your patience. And now, let’s look at some cake, shall we?

It’s rhubarb season again and one of my most favourite times of the year (right up there with that point when cherry blossoms finally burst forth in frothy clouds of pink).

In the last few weeks, people have regaled me with stories of how their rhubarb patches are growing like weeds and they have no idea what to do with all those stalks. (Including one friend who actually didn’t know it was rhubarb in her garden. If I lived anywhere near her, I would have been tempted to drive over and take them all.)

I give them all the same response: I’m more than happy to take it off their hands.

I have no shame when it comes to rhubarb.

I love it, those rosy-pink or mottled green stalks with their sour punch that mellows with a little sugar and heat.

I like it in crumb cakes and muffins, crisps and cocktails. (And here are a couple more.)

And when I saw this Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake from Martha Stewart, I knew exactly what my next project would be once I got my hands on a pound or two of the fruit.

My only real experience with upside-down cakes is the images from the ’60s and ’70s of the pineapple version with each golden ring dotted by a bright red maraschino cherry.

This version is all rhubarb with the top awash in rosy pink.

The question with upside-down cakes is always, will this upend properly to a gorgeous display of fruit on a golden-crumbed cake? The backup question follows: if it doesn’t, can I at least make it look like it did?

Except for a few errant pieces of rhubarb that slid off the cake’s edges, it came out beautifully. (Perhaps don’t jam them into the edges of the pan quite as enthusiastically as I did, since these were the ones that escaped from the top of the cake.)

I will say that I followed Stewart’s instructions exactly and she suggests removing the cake after only 10 minutes of cooling; otherwise, she says, it will stick.

As I lifted off the cake pan, rosy pink juices glided down the cake edge and settled on the cake stand like a thin moat.

It was definitely juicier than the image of Stewart’s perfect cake, but when it comes to that sweetened rhubarb syrup that forms when the fruit is cooked with a bit of sugar, I’m OK with that. And I’ve never heard anyone complain of an overly moist cake.

This was light and fluffy, slightly perfumed with orange and topped with softened rhubarb, sugar-kissed and slightly tangy.

And the unusual addition of a crumb topping (which then becomes the crumb bottom) added an unexpected, but nice, texture.

I thought it was a weird touch and was tempted to skip it initially, figuring rhubarb and cake alone would be tasty, but it added another dimension to the cake, which I liked.

And, with this, rhubarb season is on for me.

I can only hope other friends feel overwhelmed by an excess of rhubarb and they don’t mind me suggesting they feel free to pass it along.

Rhubarb Upside-Down Cake

This comes from Martha Stewart. She suggests when putting the rhubarb in the cake pan to put the pinkest edges facing down so the cake, when upended, will have the best colour.

For the topping:

4 tbsp (60 mL) unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup (125 mL) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (50 mL) sugar
coarse salt

For the cake:

3/4 cup (175 mL) unsalted butter, divided, at room temperature, plus more for buttering pan
1 lb (500 g) rhubarb, trimmed and cut on a very sharp diagonal about ½-inch (1-cm) thick
1¾ cups (425 mL) sugar, divided
1½ cups (375 mL) all-purpose flour
1½ tsp (7 mL) baking powder
coarse salt
1/2 tsp (2 mL) finely grated orange zest
1 tbsp (15 mL) fresh orange juice
2 large eggs
1 cup (250 mL) sour cream

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).

Make the topping: Stir together butter, flour, sugar and 1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt until moist and crumbly.

Make the cake: Butter a 9-inch (23-cm) round cake pan (2 inches/5 cm deep). Dot with 4 tbsp (60 mL) butter, cut into pieces. Toss rhubarb with 3/4 cup (175 mL) sugar; let stand for 2 minutes. Toss again, and spread in pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder and 1½ tsp (7 mL) salt. Beat remaining butter and cup of sugar with a mixer on medium speed until pale and fluffy. Beat in zest and juice. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time, until incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl.

Beat in flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with sour cream, until smooth. Spread evenly over rhubarb. Crumble topping evenly over batter.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean and top springs back when touched, about 1 hour. Let cool for 10 minutes. Run a knife around edge of cake, and invert onto a wire rack. Let cool completely.

Cook’s Note: Let the cake cool for 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. The rhubarb will be too hot to handle safely right after baking. But if the cake sits much longer, it may stick.

This first appeared in the Calgary Herald. For more recipes and instructional videos, check out the Herald’s Food page.

Baking, Desserts

Rocky Road Brownies

May 24, 2011 11 Comments

A couple of months ago I went on a ski trip with a number of friends to Golden. OK, for me it was an apres ski trip, where I excelled in drinking margaritas, attempting my first shot ski (I’ll let you google that; no wait, now it sounds dirty: it’s a ski with shot glasses attached so four people are doing shots at once.) (EDIT: I stand mistaken. This is a five-shot shot ski. Thanks Tait!), hot tubbing, cooking (for which I volunteered) and participating in much general merriment.

My friend Dawn and I created a meal plan and bought all the groceries to make things easier for everyone attending (and then we divided the cost amongst all the people on the trip). While we had a solid plan, we did wind around the grocery store aisles trying to figure out if we were missing anything. Somehow along the way we decided it would be awesome to get some marshmallows for hot chocolate. And, for some unknown reason, this culminated in purchasing a 1-kilogram (yeah, that’s 2.2 pounds) bag of baby marshmallows. When, at the end of the weekend, we were dividing up the remaining groceries, I somehow was gifted the marshmallows, which, of course, we never opened.

Initially, my instinct was to make browned-butter Rice Krispie treats. Um, then things got busy and I was eating a lot of last-minute meals and that generally translated into eating the entire box of cereal I had bought to make the marshmallow treats. Fail.

And then I starting thinking about some S’mores brownies my friend Andree made. So I started googling and at some point I stumbled across these Rocky Road Brownies. (Why they are related to TLC, I know not.) What I can tell you? They are AMAZING.

Deep, dark, fudgy base, topped with melted smears of sweet marshmallow and the salty crunch of pecans.

Just look at that.

Let me put it this way: I usually eat one piece of whatever I’ve baked and then give the rest away. This time? I ate two pieces, gave some away, but held another two back for later. And when those were gone I’m not afraid to say that I was a wee bit sad. Thankfully (or not), I’ve got about 2 pounds of those marshmallows left.

Clearly, I’m making these again.

(The original recipe calls for walnuts, but I like pecans, so that’s what I keep around. Also, I didn’t have buttermilk and didn’t want to buy some just for this, so I used 1/4 cup of whole milk with a bit of lemon juice squeezed in.)

Rocky Road Brownies

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup miniature marshmallows
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Butter an 8-inch square pan. (If you have parchment paper, I like to make a sling by lining the pan with a piece of parchment large enough to create overhang outside of the pan.)

In a pot over low heat, combine butter and cocoa, stirring constantly until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, flour, buttermilk, egg and vanilla. Mix until smooth. Spread evenly in the pan. Bake 25 minutes or until center feels dry. Do not overbake. Remove from oven, sprinkle with marshmallows, pecans and chocolate chips. Return to oven 3 to 5 minutes or just until topping is slightly melted.

Cool in pan on wire rack. Cut into squares.

Baking, Breakfast, Snacks

Welsh Scones

April 26, 2011 12 Comments

Growing up, I had a thing for the Royal family.

I had coffee table books all about Princess Diana, her wedding to Charles, her boys, William and Harry, along with a video of Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s wedding.

I was one of those girly-girls with a penchant for dressing up, wanting to wear twirly skirts (that whirled out when I spun in circles; I called them turn-y skirts), put on lipstick. I always wanted a tiara.

So, although the inundation of countdowns and articles and television specials and photo galleries leading up to the wedding between Prince William of Wales and Kate (I’m sorry, Catherine) Middleton has been a bit much, my inner eight-year-old girl is kind of loving it. What will the dress look like? What diamond-encrusted tiara will adorn her lovely dark locks? What will the bridesmaids wear? Will they have turn-y skirts?

Outside of the fantasy world, I don’t envy Kate. I’m happy for her and William because they do some genuinely in love, something so clearly missing in the relationship between his parents (though I couldn’t see that as a child). But I wonder too at what she’s giving up for that love. Yes, there are jewels and gorgeous clothes, first-class trips, brushes with celebrity. And there is the paparazzi, the pomp, the expectations, the constantly public life.

No matter, I will be indulging that inner child and tuning in to the wedding.

In honour of that, I’ll be eating scones (and drinking some champagne, of course — though not at 3 a.m. I’m not so devoted that I will wake up that early. That’s why I have a PVR.) as Kate walks down the aisle.

I could eat any version of scones, but I decided to create a recipe that would combine a basic scone with a Welsh cake (which share some similarities with scones, though they are fried instead of baked). My stepfather, who is of Welsh descent, often made these as a Sunday treat when we were kids. (A tradition, thankfully, that continues when I visit my parents.) They have a distinctive flavour that comes from nutmeg and currants. Basically, I wanted to use those flavours. Not just because I love them, but it’s just so fitting.

He is Prince William of Wales, of course. And the couple will start their life as newlyweds in Anglesey, an island off the northwest coast of Wales.

I have to give credit where it’s due, so I will say that Nigella Lawson has changed the way I make scones. Her trick of grating frozen butter is just . . . perfection. I cannot recommend it enough. No matter what scone recipe I use these days, I always, always, always use this technique. Please, try it, I implore you.

This is based on her strawberry shortcake recipe, but has been adjusted.

Welsh Scones

1½ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup currants
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (I may go with a tad more next time)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, frozen
1 large egg
½ cup half-and-half or whipping cream (you may need slightly more)
2 tablespoons whipping cream
2 tablespoons sugar (regular or natural cane sugar), optional

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Mix together the flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, currants and nutmeg in a bowl. Grate the frozen butter into the dry ingredients and use your fingertips to lightly toss all together. Whisk the egg into the half-and-half cream and pour into the flour mixture a little at a time, using a fork to mix. (I often need another tablespoon or two; I chalk it up to that dry Calgary weather.)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, then roll gently to about ¾-inch thick. Dip a cutter in flour and cut out as many scones as possible. (Small ones are cute, but sometimes you just want a large scone with lots of room for Devonshire cream and jam.) Work the scraps back together, re-roll and cut more. (Nigella suggests using a 3-inch/6½-cm round cutter to make 8; I used a smaller one and got about 14.) Place on a baking sheet, brush the tops with the 2 tablespoons whipping cream and sprinkle with the remaining sugar, if desired. I used natural cane sugar, which has larger grains.

Bake until golden. Between 10 and 15 minutes for larger scones. Cutting them smaller? Check earlier. Mine took about 9 minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool.

Eat with copious amounts of jam and Devonshire cream. Or butter and jam. Or just jam.

Baking, Desserts

Flourless Chocolate Cake

April 24, 2011 10 Comments

A milestone slipped past last week.

I took note of it, but said nothing because there was no point in celebrating unless there was cake.

Actually, the original plan was to make a salted caramel tart but, once again, pastry bested me. One day, pastry. One day! Truth be told, it was flaky as all get out and tasted great, but uneven rolling led to some parts being more cooked than others and there were slumping and shrinking issues. My theory is that I’m actually not putting enough weight in when pre-baking and then taking the beans out too quickly. It worked much better with the second shell, which didn’t slump as much, but the unevenness of the baked pastry was a little more than this mostly-perfectionist could handle.

No matter, there was a back-up plan. Albeit one that would have to wait until post-milestone.

See, it’s my blog’s third birthday.

Three years.

Craziness.

I remember first broaching the idea with some friends after we had been out at the pub. We were outside, in the frigid cold, saying goodnight when I just sort of threw it out there. “I’m thinking of starting a food blog.”

And since then there have been many baking projects and, thankfully, many happy eaters. (A special thanks must go to the Civilized Sunday crew at the Herald who willingly — and, occassionally, expectantly — ate what I brought to work on the weekend shift. Cake for breakfast? Yeah, that was a good tradition.

There have been amazing times and incredibly tough times.

So, I’m interested to see what the next year (and more) will bring.

For the last three years, I’ve kicked off the start of a new blogging year with cake. First, there was the inaugural Red Velvet Cake (wee bit embarrassed by the photos back then, but moving along), followed by a much-better version for my first blogiversary and then a triple layer chocolate cake last year.

This year is only slightly different. It’s still cake, but it’s a decadent and rich, truffle-like Flourless Chocolate Cake.

At least in this case, unlike the pastry situation, slumping is expected.

This cake is deeply, darkly rich, ironically lightened by a topping of whipping and sour creams, beaten with icing sugar. (Or, if you think you have tons because there’s always about six bags in the cupboard where they appear to multiply like bunnies until the day you need some and then there isn’t any, a little bit of berry sugar will do the trick.) And it is Oh. So. Good.

I actually heard about it over Twitter from the gang at Real Simple one day. Made it a few days later for friends and was still thinking about it months later and how I really needed to make it again. That’s the sign of a good cake, I figure. (Original recipe here. Though I haven’t really made any changes.)

Baking like this is so lovely. I especially love adding the chopped chocolate to the hot butter-and-cream mixture and then stirring, stirring, stirring as it changes from a curdled-looking mass to silky smooth melted chocolate. And how it comes out of the oven all puffy and light looking before collapsing into a deeply dark slump of rich chocolate cake. The slight tang in the dollop of the whipped cream takes it to a whole new level.

I ate one slice and gave the rest away to friends. Now, as it nears bedtime, I wish I had saved myself just another sliver. Ah well. Reason to make it again soon.

This recipe is fantastic, but I would add a pinch or two of salt. I really feel that a tiny bit of salt in sweet things rounds them out. In this case, I didn’t quite have enough unsalted butter, so about half of the butter was salted. I think it worked perfectly and I may do this from now on. Only have unsalted? Just add a pinch or two of regular table salt.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus more for the pan
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for the pan
1 1/4 cups whipping (heavy) cream, divided
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
5 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup icing sugar, plus more for dusting

Heat oven to 350° F. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and dust with cocoa powder.
In a medium saucepan, heat the butter with ¼ cup of the whipping cream over medium-low heat until the butter is melted. Add the chocolate and stir until melted and smooth; remove from heat.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, granulated sugar, and cocoa powder; whisk in the chocolate mixture.
Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake until puffed and set, 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 1 hour. Run a knife around the edge of the cake before unmolding.
Using an electric mixer, beat the remaining 1 cup of whipping cream with the sour cream and icing sugar until soft peaks form. Dust the cake with confectioners’ sugar and serve with the whipped cream.

Baking, Desserts

Pecan Pie Bars

March 4, 2011 3 Comments

Going through my delicious bookmarks, I clicked a few links for things I wanted to make this week. And then I was mildly surprised to see that about half were from Family Kitchen on Babble.

Including this one for Pecan Pie Bars.

I’ve only had a few pecan pies in my time. Probably the most memorable was one I was served by the parents of a boy I was dating for a couple of weeks in England. He was the friend of my friend’s boyfriend, so he hung out with us while I was visiting her in the summer between Grade 11 and Grade 12. Saw the sights of England, drank a lot of Buck’s Fizz, spent a week in the Welsh town of Aberdovey and got a temporary boyfriend (who broke it off shortly after I returned to Vancouver, though not after sending me one or two care packages filled with mix tapes. He made me a friendship bracelet too. Ah, young romance.)

As part of our extremely short courtship, he invited me to his parents’ house for dinner. I don’t remember much about that meal, though I’m sure it was chock-full of awkwardness, except that his mother made pecan pie.

Anyway, I’ve never attempted making one (that damn fear of pastry), but when I saw this recipe for Pecan Pie Bars, I was totally smitten. Who doesn’t love a shortbread crust?

The trick with shortbread, I’ve learned, is to wait and let the butter get really gloppy before getting started. I let my butter sit out for 36 hours, I think, so it was perfect for this recipe. But before I got started, I finally took a moment to fix my KitchenAid mixer, which had too large a gap between the mixing implements and the bottom of the bowl, which meant I was constantly scraping down and around the base of the bowl to make sure everything was getting mixed together. Bless the Kitchn for their oh-so-helpful tutorial on how to make that adjustment. It took about three seconds and has greatly improved things.

Just after they went into the oven, I got a text from a friend saying she had unexpectedly come into two tickets to the Heritage Classic. Did I want to go? Although no one would call me a huge hockey fan, I do like to go to games when opportunities present themselves to me. And the thought of attending this game was kind of appealing, despite the negative temperatures.

The view from our seats as the sun set.

I thought the bars would be done in plenty of time, but they were still incredibly jiggly in the centre when I went to pull them out (albeit a bit early since my oven sometimes runs a bit hot). I gave them five more minutes. And then another five. And then another three. And then I had to leave. The centre was still not set, but I had high hopes it would solidify more as it cooled and then after a night in the fridge.

It was not to be.

When I cut into the bars the next day, the edges were fine, if not slightly (and deliciously) gooey. The centre fell completely apart in a liquid mess of pecans and sticky goo. Not going to lie, I ate part of it with a spoon, but that’s why there are only photos of edge pieces.

The sauce also bubbled up over the top of the crust in some places, sneaking under to the bottom of the pan. This was kind of a lovely accident, really because it baked into the crust.

I will definitely make these again, this time letting them bake a little bit more.

Find the original post on Babble here.

Pecan Pie Bars

for the crust:

1 1/2 stick unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup unbleached flour

for the filling:

1 cup corn syrup
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
3 tablespoons melted butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons flour
1/4 teaspoon cider vinegar
2 cups pecans

Preheat oven to 325.

For the crust: In a medium bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and salt. Add in flour and mix until just incorporated. Press into the bottom and up the sides of an 8-inch square pan. The crust should come up at least two inches on the sides.

For the filling: In a large bowl, whisk together corn syrup, sugars, melted butter, eggs, salt, vanilla, flour, and vinegar. Spread pecans out in the bottom of the crust. Pour sugar mixture over the top. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until the center is just set.

Cool completely and cut into squares.

Baking, Desserts

Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze

February 11, 2011 21 Comments

I’m not going to tell you how exactly how long this has been sitting in the vault. But I’ll give you a hint; I made these for someone who had given up drinking coca-cola for Lent. Yeah, I should probably join some sort of 12-step program for procrastinators.

But I digress . . . .

So, I thought it would be hilarious to make Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze for a friend. Only after I brought them to her did I realize that maybe her giving up Coke for Lent probably meant any consumption of the cola and that in my effort to be funny I might actually be undoing her commitment. She assured me that she had only given up drinking Coke and that she saw the humour in the cupcakes. I continued to feel guilt through much of Lent.

I can’t actually remember how or when I stumbled on this recipe in Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess, but I had marked it with a Post-it note at some point and then I think I just connected the dots later. It’s only one of about 12 recipes that have little tags marking them as “to-make,” so I guess I should get going on that.

One of the things I love about Nigella’s recipes are some of them call for simply melting the butter instead of waiting it to come to room temperature. For someone like me, who sometimes wants to make things relatively on impulse (read: impatient), this means I still can. No waiting.

And it was kind of fun to make these. Not only because of the odd mix of ingredients but also because the reaction between the cocoa and Coke was a bit hypnotic. Giant bubbles, that pretty much sums it up.

I was a little freaked out by how thin the batter was, but they bake up beautifully. They’re so . . . light. I don’t know how else to describe them. They certainly don’t taste like Coke, but it’s still charming to say that’s the not-so-secret ingredient.

The original recipe is for a full cake and, although Nigella suggests you can make cupcakes, she doesn’t give a baking time. I guessed at 15 minutes and when I checked them they were perfectly done. However, she says it will make 12 cupcakes and it made 16 for me (An ongoing problem for me is I always end up with more cupcakes than the recipe specifies. Unsure if I make them smaller or if my muffin tin is smaller? Ok, “problem” isn’t really the right word.)

So, if your batter fits perfectly in 12, I’d bank on it taking a few more minutes.

Coca-cola Cupcakes with Glaze

200 g plain flour
250 g sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
125 mL buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
125 g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
175 mL Coca-cola

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat the egg, buttermilk and vanilla in in a measuring jug. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-cola, heating it gently. Pour into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the liquid ingredients from the jug, beating until it is well blended.

Pour into a muffin tin that has been greased or lined with papers and bake for 15 minutes (or more, see above) until a tester comes out clean.

Glaze

225 g icing sugar
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons Coca-cola
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Sieve the icing sugar and set aside. In a heavy-based saucepan, combine the butter, Coca-Cola and cocoa and stir over a low heat until the butter has melted. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla, and spoon in the sieved icing sugar, beating as you do, until you’ve got a good, spreadable, but still runny, icing.

Pour over the cupcakes while they are still warm, and leave to cool.

Baking, Breakfast

Cinnamon Rolls for Michelle

January 31, 2011 41 Comments

This has taken more than a year to write.

Because although I’ve composed this dozens of times in my head, when it came down to actually sitting at the laptop words have completely escaped me.

And, I guess, the timing just wasn’t right.

This is for my friend Michelle.

On Dec. 30, 2009, Michelle Lang was in a two-LAV convoy returning to the Canadian Forces base in Kandahar when they hit an IED. She and four soldiers — Garrett Chidley, George Miok, Zachery McCormack and Kirk Taylor — were killed in the blast. Five others were injured.

Three weeks earlier, we were out celebrating my birthday. It was her final weekend before she flew out to Afghanistan for what was expected to be a two-month stint reporting on the conflict in that country for Canwest News. Despite the fact she was less than 72 hours from taking off and had myriad errands to run and things to organize before leaving, she came out for dinner and then drinks, staying out well past bedtime. Friends always came first; that’s just the sort of girl she was.

And she was from the start.

When I moved to Calgary I had arranged for a couple of places to stay in those first few weeks, but there was a four-day gap where I had no plan, hoping to depend on the kindness of another reporter with whom I had a mutual friend. Instead, Michelle stepped in, offering up her couch to me — a virtual stranger — for as much time as I needed. She apologized it wasn’t nicer.

I live in that apartment now. On the night before I was to move in, Michelle stayed up until the early morning to get it into tip-top shape for me because she knew I wasn’t happy about giving up my old place. That’s also the sort of girl she was.

She was a huge supporter of this blog, she wasn’t afraid to scold me over my ever-growing shoe collection or dish out the tough love when it was needed. She offered up praise for a good story or kitchen victory; she listened when things were going sideways; she was my sushi-and-Buffy buddy (take-out and DVDs for a mid-week pick-me-up).

On the day before she left, I called her quickly to say I was going to miss her, to have fun, tell good stories and that I would see her in January. And then I said I would bake whatever she wanted when she was back in Calgary.

“What’s your favourite thing?” I asked.

“Cinnamon rolls,” she replied.

And I promised they would be hers when she returned.

A few weeks after her death, after the repatriation ceremony at CFB Trenton, the funeral in Vancouver and memorial service in Calgary, after the media coverage quieted, I set out to make the cinnamon buns. The fog of grief was still thick and I wanted to do something, some tiny thing, some personal thing, to honour her and follow through on my promise.

I set out to make the cinnamon rolls.

They were a complete failure. As in, the dough didn’t rise at all. Frustrated and angry — at more than just a baking misstep — I threw the hard lump of dough away and broke down. I didn’t attempt them again.

(Yeast-based goods are a downfall for me anyway, hence my love of all things no-knead. Although I did make some no-knead pumpkin cinnamon rolls that were successful, for some reason I feel this neither fulfilled nor broke my promise to make some for Michelle. I guess I figured the fact they were pumpkin made them a different kind of cinnamon bun altogether.)

Leading up to the one-year anniversary of losing Michelle, I started thinking again about those cinnamon rolls and my promise. But I wasn’t ready. I dug my heels in trying to fight against the approaching day — a futile task.

And when it passed I knew it was time.

Michelle, this one is for you.

xo

gwendolyn

(Immense gratitude for the Pioneer Woman who had a recipe that was easy to work with and delicious. Thank you, I needed that.)

Incidentally, these red bowls were a birthday present from Michelle a few years ago. Now, when I pull them out (which I do a lot, since they are awesome ones from Williams-Sonoma), I always think of her.

Pioneer Woman’s Cinnamon Rolls

I have halved this recipe, which still made an insane amount of rolls, as in two 9-inch cake pans’ worth and they were jammed full. This is as I made it, but you can easily double it if you want to feed an army. The glaze/frosting recipe is loosely based on hers, but I changed it quite a bit because I wanted something lemon-y.

2 cups milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons (1 package) active dry yeast
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon, heaping, baking powder
1/2 teaspoon, scant, baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter, plus 2 tablespoons for the pans
cinnamon

In a large pot, mix the milk, oil and sugar and heat until scalded, just before boiling. Remove from the heat and let it cool until lukewarm, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Sprinkle over yeast and let sit for a minute. Add in the 4 cups of flour and stir. Cover and let it rise for at least an hour until doubled (or more).

Add the remaining 1/2 cup of flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir together. (I had to knead it a little bit to get all the remaining dry ingredients worked in.)

Sprinkle the area where you’re going to roll out the dough generously with flour. Divide the dough in half and roll it thin into a rough rectangle. Drizzle half the melted butter over the dough and then sprinkle half of the sugar and a generous dose of cinnamon. (I went too easy on it and wish I had used more. Don’t be afraid!) Roll the dough in a neat, tight line and then pinch the seam together to seal it. Slice the rolls into even pieces, about 1-inch wide. (Mine were probably closer to 1 1/2-inches.)

Spread 1 tablespoon of melted butter into a cake or pie pan (she calls for 7-inch pans; I used 9-inch ones) and lay in the rolled dough slices. Let them rise for 20 to 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375.

Bake rolls until light golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.

Lemon Glaze

1/2 bag powdered (icing) sugar
zest and juice of 1 lemon
pinch or two of salt
1/4 – 1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons melted butter

Mix all the ingredients together. Add more milk if the mixture is too thick or more sugar if it is too runny.

Pour over the rolls when they are still slightly warm.

Baking

Eggnog Sugar Cookies

December 14, 2010 4 Comments

Can I just admit something pretty embarrassing (for bloggers anyway) here?

I made these a year ago. And then I procrastinated (It’s a curse!). And then, well, the window closed for holiday baking.

And that was that.

Until now.

However, in the intervening year (!), I have completely forgotten why I wanted to make these and what I was going to say about them. I mean, cookies = good. Eggnog = good. Eggnog cookies = good x 2.

And, really, do they need any other explanation?

I think not.

Thanks to Dinner with Julie for the recipe, of course.

Eggnog Sugar Cookies

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon rum extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt

In large bowl, beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla and rum extract. Combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon and salt ; with wooden spoon, stir into butter mixture in 3 additions. Divide in half; flatten each slightly. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or until chilled. (Make ahead: Refrigerate for up to 1 day.)

On lightly floured surface, roll out each half of dough to 1/4-inch (5 mm) thickness. Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes.

Bake in top and bottom thirds of 375°F (190°C) oven, rotating and switching pans halfway through, for about 10 minutes or until golden on bottom and edges. Let cool for 1 minute on pans. Transfer to racks; let cool completely. Decorate with icing or sprinkle with icing sugar.

Baking

Chewy Lemon Cookies

December 5, 2010 74 Comments

I’m practically laid out on the couch, cosying up to an ice pack right now (Thank god for laptops.) having done something again to my back. Stretch, ice, advil, repeat. Needless to say, the weekend has not been very active. One errand yesterday and brunch with a friend today before I had to make nice with my back and hang out on the living room floor staring at the ceiling. You know what lying on the floor shows me? That I really need to vacuum more.

So, no baking or cooking today, but luckily I have saved up this little chewy lemon cookie recipe for a rainy day (of sorts). If you’ve been on this blog long enough, you know how much I love lemon. In fact, some may say it’s an addiction.

And that means when I see a good-looking lemon-centric recipe, like this one for Chewy Lemon Cookies, it isn’t long before I’m making it. I was also intrigued by the idea because I absolutely adore the Lime Sugar Cookies I often make. There are very few things these two recipes have in common, other than a citrus focus. But they’re both fantastic in their own way.

I loved these cookies for the chew and crackled top. Plus, of course, the lemon-y flavour.

I baked them off on a Saturday and shipped about a dozen off to the Sunday crew at the Herald because even though I’m not there on the weekends anymore, it doesn’t mean I can’t take care of my girls. Their grateful tweets made it totally worthwhile.

As some of you know, I’m a terrible procrastinator and have been sitting on this recipe for two weeks. A friend has been gently reminding me to get it up because she wants to make them herself — that’s how good they are.

Chewy Lemon Cookies

from MyBakingAddiction.com

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
zest of one large lemon
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar for rolling cookies

Preheat oven to 350F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a larger bowl, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla, lemon zest and juice.

Add in dry ingredients, beating until just combined. Roll rounded spoonfuls of dough into balls and then roll in sugar. Place on lined cookie sheets, about 1 or 2 inches apart.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes. (Mine needed barely 8 minutes; they were not yet golden but I wanted them still pale and tender.) Remove from oven and let stand on cookie sheet for 2 minutes before removing to cook on wire racks.

Makes 24 – 36 cookies.

Baking

Stephen Duckett’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

November 24, 2010 10 Comments

If you live in Alberta, chances are good you’ve heard about “cookiegate.”

If you don’t, there’s still a chance you may have heard about it. (Even DListed caught wind.)

Here it is in a nutshell: after a week that saw harsh criticism levelled at Alberta Health Services, the board’s chief executive Stephen Duckett spent the day Friday in a meeting examining Alberta’s emergency care crisis. At the end, he came out to find three reporters looking for comment.

And what did he say? “I’m eating my cookie.”

Repeatedly.

You can see the entire exchange on YouTube here, though I also quite enjoyed this Cookie Monster/Duckett mash-up that someone later posted.

I’m not saying he had to stop and give a quote. My point is merely that this is a highly-paid official and a professional. It would have been much easier to simply stop, say he would not be giving a comment but that there was a media availability in 30 minutes if the reporters wanted a quote. To wave the cookie in a reporter’s face was rude. To continue for two minutes going on about eating the cookie was just comical. And not in an endearing way.

Anyway, I’m not here to wax on about politics. This is a food blog and I’m a baker at heart, so for me the curiousity became increasingly about the cookie at the heart of the controversy.

On Monday, I tweeted that I wondered what type of cookie Duckett had been eating. Turns out I’m not the only one that thought that way. The Edmonton Journal’s political columnist, Paula Simons, tracked down the chef behind the now-infamous cookie and he supplied the recipe. And all I could think after that was, I have to bake these things.

Turns out, he is Emmanuel David of La Persaud catering, a man who believes the secret to a chewy and soft oatmeal cookie lies in using lots of butter and sugar. And this recipe has it in spades. In fact, I was a bit surprised when I saw the ingredient list because it seemed to consist solely of those two ingredients. (Turns out there was some misinformation initially, which the chef later corrected. Below is the corrected version of the recipe.)

Still, only 1 teaspoon of baking powder didn’t seem to be enough leavening to give these cookies some height when competing against all that butter. And a complete absence of salt seemed strange.

But this chef must know what he’s doing, I figured and I confidently moved ahead, creaming together the copious amounts of butter and granulated sugar, beating in the four eggs one at a time and then gently folding in the dry mixture of flour, oatmeal, chopped raisins and the tiny amount of baking powder. (I love the idea of chopping the raisins first so you get little bits of them rather than just complete ones every once in a while.)

OK, I threw in two pinches of salt. It seemed crazy not to have some. Yes, even though I used salted butter.

I threw a tray of six rounded balls of dough in the oven and then set the timer for 10 minutes. (The recipe doesn’t specify how long they go in for, just to bake until “golden.”) When the timer went off, the edges were verging past golden and into “crisp” territory, but the tops of the cookies, while cooked, were almost as pale as snow. I would let them bake for another minute, but just don’t like burnt cookies, so I pulled them out and tried again. For the second batch, I moved the rack in the oven up a rung so it was in the top third and not in the middle. These cookies fared a little better.

I tried making them smaller; I tried making them bigger.

But nothing I did made them look the same colour as the cookie Duckett brandishes in the video.

Perhaps the best thing I did was sprinkle a scant pinch (just a few grains really) of sea salt on top of the last few batches to try to even out the sweetness.

It was only halfway through as I was trying to puzzle out why they weren’t working (the perfectionist in me was absolutely beyond annoyed) when I began to wonder if David meant brown sugar when he just wrote “sugar” in the recipe. That certainly would have changed the colour and given them a bit more heft. It’s too late now, but I may revisit this later and make that swap. Or do half granulated and half brown to see what happens.

Because, ultimately, these are very light, soft cookies and worth a second attempt.

As the last tray came out of the oven, news began to trickle out over twitter that Duckett had been given the boot.

I guess that’s the way the cookie crumbles.

Stephen Duckett’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

from Emmanuel David, converted into imperial measurements by me. The instructions are exactly how he gave them on Simons’ blog.

500g butter (about 2 1/8 cups. One block of butter is 454g, so it’s more than that)
450g sugar (2 cups)
4 large eggs
200g organic oatmeal (2 cups)
100g California Golden Raisins, chopped (scant 3/4 cup and I used purple ones because that’s what I could find.)
400g flour (2 3/4 cups)
5 mL baking powder (1 teaspoon)
Dash cinnamon, optional

Method:

1. Cream Butter & Sugar Until Fluffy. Add Egg Gradually

2. Fold Flour, Oatmeal & Raisins Mix Well

3. Shape cookies into small round balls. Do not flatten – place on cookie sheets as balls.

4. Bake 180 degrees C until golden brown.

(Gwendolyn’s note here: Most of mine baked for about 12 minutes to get a golden edge and bottom. They were fully cooked, though still pale.)

Yield: Makes approx. 30- 90g Cookies

(Mine made more than 30, for sure. Somewhere closer to 45.)

Baking

No-knead Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

October 31, 2010 6 Comments

Last day of October and I’ve got a pumpkin recipe in just under the wire.

Though, truth be told, I made these a couple of weeks ago and took them in to the newsroom for election night, hoping the sugar rush would keep us all going through the tight deadlines and late night. With so many people voting and such a crazy race right up until the end, most of us stayed later than we ever have for an election. I can’t remember ever covering one as interesting and found myself watching the results roll in live as if it was some sort of TV show.

Anyway, back to the rolls.

They’re no-knead. Sensing a theme here? First no-knead pizza dough (if you haven’t tried this, please bookmark it, so very worth it) and then no-knead bread and now no-knead cinnamon rolls. God only knows what will be next, but I am loving this trend.

Once again, it takes some planning since it takes more time for these to rise. The recipe suggests, though, you can let them rise then refrigerate overnight and continue the next day, which is exactly what I did and it worked like a charm. Sure, there were some paranoid moments, like when I cut them into slices and let them rise in the pan prior to baking but couldn’t discern they actually rose a second time. I didn’t have much hope when I put them into the hot oven, but they came out all fat and puffy, shouldering each other in neat little rows.

I gave two to some friend who had popped by with her new baby since she was in the ‘hood and she texted me seemingly minutes after leaving to say she had eaten them both already and was tempted to lick the plastic wrap. That, my friends, is a pretty good endorsement.

The dough is beyond sticky and please learn from my misstep by using a really big bowl. I had a difficult time incorporating all the flour in my small-ish bowl (which felt big before I combined the wet and dry ingredients) and eventually had to dive in with my hands. Let me repeat: beyond sticky. (But, you know, kind of fun at the same time.)

But beyond that, it was pretty easy to work with once it came time roll out and, uh, roll up again. Some of my filling leaked out the edges. Obviously, I’m no expert at cinnamon rolls. But I’ll take ugly and tasty any day. And man are these tasty. I mean, really, how can you go wrong? pumpkin, cinnamon, brown sugar, butter, glaze? Yeah, it’s all good.

So, this is kind of short and sweet but if I don’t post this soon, I’m going to miss my Oct. 31 deadline.

In short: these are good, pumpkin-y and easy. Enjoy.

This comes from the folks over at the Kitchn, like quite a few recipes I’ve posted here. It’s almost to the point where I’m wondering if I need to create a tag for them . . . .

The only change I made was I omitted the pecans. I’ve got nothing against them but was just too lazy to get them out of the freezer, toast and chop them. Oh, and I didn’t use as much milk in the glaze which is why, I’m pretty sure, it’s so much thicker. Not that anyone was complaining.

No-Knead Pumpkin Rolls with Brown Sugar Glaze
Makes 16-18 rolls

For the dough:

1/4 cup water
1 scant tablespoon yeast (1 package)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 15-ounce can pumpkin puree
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

For the filling:

1/2 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 cups pecans – toasted, chopped, and divided in half (optional)

For the glaze:

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup brown sugar
pinch salt
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Sprinkle the yeast over the water and let it sit a few minutes until the yeast is dissolved.

Meanwhile, warm the milk and butter in a small saucepan on the stove top until the butter is melted. Combine this with the sugar in a large heat-proof mixing bowl and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Let the milk mixture cool until it is just warm to the touch – NOT HOT. Then stir in the yeast and the pumpkin. Add the salt and five cups of the flour all at once, stirring until all the flour has been absorbed. Squish it between your hands if you’re having trouble incorporating the last of the flour. The dough will be sticky, but should come together in a shaggy ball. If it’s still more the consistency of cookie batter, work in an additional 1/2 cup of flower.

Cover the dough and let it rise for 1-3 hours. During this time, it should double in bulk. At this point, you can punch the dough down and refrigerate it overnight or continue shaping the rolls.

To shape the rolls (either immediately or with the refrigerated dough), sprinkle your work surface with a little flour and dump the dough on top. Pat it down into a rough rectangle and then use a floured rolling pin to roll it into a rectangular shape about a half an inch thick, longer than it is wide. If the dough gets sticky, sprinkle a little more flour on the dough’s surface and on your hands.

Melt the butter in the microwave and stir in the brown sugar and the spices. Spread this over the rectangle of dough, leaving an inch of bare dough at the top. Sprinkle one cup of the toasted pecans over the dough, if using. Starting at the edge closest to you, roll the dough into a cylinder and pinch it closed at the top.

Rub a tablespoon of soft butter into the bottom of two 9×13 baking dishes, two 9-inch cake pans, or a combination. Using a bench cutter or a sharp knife, cut the cylinder into individual rolls 1 – 1 1/2 inches thick. Place them into your baking dishes so they have a little wiggle room on all sides to rise. Cover them with a clean kitchen towel and let them rise until they fill the pan and look puffy, 30 minutes for already-warm dough and 1 hour for dough that’s been refrigerated.

About 20 minutes before baking, begin heating the oven to 375°. When the rolls are ready, bake them for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden and starting to look toasted around the edges. Rotate the pans halfway through cooking.

While they are baking, prepare the glaze. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the milk and butter. When the butter has melted, add the brown sugar and salt. Stir until the brown sugar has melted. Remove from heat and strain into a mixing bowl to remove any sugar clumps. Stir in the powdered sugar. This should form a thick but pourable glaze.

Let the baked rolls cool for about five minutes and then pour the glaze on top. Sprinkle the remaining cup of pecans over the top, if more nuttiness is desired. Eat them immediately. Leftovers will keep for several days and are best reheated for a minute in the microwave.

Baking

No-knead bread

October 20, 2010 9 Comments

Little side note: Patent and the Pantry now has a page on Facebook. Come say hello and join in the discussion. Find it here.)

And now, on with the baking!

No one would ever call me trendy.

I’m not on top of the latest fashions, my music tastes are more eclectic than current and I’d label my style retro rather than cutting edge.

So, when food trends begin taking over the Internet, appearing on blogs and in newspaper articles alike, I don’t exactly jump on board. Macarons? Those look a bit tricky, I say. Whoopie Pies? Not sure what the allure is there. No-knead bread? Looks complicated.

No-knead bread was everywhere about four years ago, shortly after the New York Times’ Mark Bittman wrote a piece about Jim Lahey and his revolutionary recipe for a crusty loaf of bread that required very little effort, only advance planning. Soon bloggers were extolling the virtues of this bread and posts abounded with photos of the round boule with its dark gold crust and large-holed interior.

My parents jumped on the bandwagon and in the intervening years have abandoned their bread maker in favour of no-knead bread, making a loaf seemingly every other day.

So, on a recent visit with them, I was finally able to taste what all the fuss was about.

It’s no surprise everyone’s been raving.

This bread has a crisp crust, but the interior — riddled with the large air bubbles that come from the long fermentation — is all soft chew. It tastes like bread should.

And it makes amazing toast.

But even with all those points, I still resisted for another year before finally deciding it was time to see if I could do it, too.

(I will readily admit here that part of that hesitation stemmed from the inevitable danger that comes from a carboholic realizing she can have access to fresh, homemade bread at will.)

In my glass bowl, I mixed the flour, salt, instant yeast and cool water. I stirred it into a sticky, shaggy mess, covered it with plastic wrap and left it alone for 18 hours. The next day (the most reasonable way to make this bread, I figure, is to let it rise overnight), the dough had tripled in size and was dotted with hundreds of tiny bubbles.

It smelled of yeast and good things to come.

The only time I deviated from the recipe was when Lahey called for a second rise on a clean kitchen towel using wheat bran or additional flour to keep it from sticking, which is then used to dump the dough into a preheated cast iron or enamel pot. Instead, I let it rise again on a piece of parchment. When it came time to get the dough into the cooking vessel, it was just a matter of picking up the four corners of the paper and plopping it in the pot, greatly lessening any chances of getting burned.

When it came out of the oven, and I lifted it out of the pot using two wooden spoons, I was excited. It looked and smelled like a perfect round loaf.

And that first slice was perfection, topped only with a thin smear of real butter.

Besides the undeniable beauty of eating a slice of bread still slightly warm from the oven (although Lahey calls for it to rest for at least an hour before cutting into it, it is often hard to resist waiting the entire 60 minutes), there is something so satisfying about baking a loaf of bread on your own.

So — I may be behind the times in finally trying it, but this bread is no passing fad.

(This is a Danish Dough Whisk — a tool that is great for mixing dough.)

The recipe is Lahey’s own, but I have adapted it to use parchment paper for the second rise. I also found the cooking time too long, so when I bake this bread I cut it down by about 10 minutes.

(The cooking times here are as Lahey suggests.)

Basic No-Knead Bread

Adapted slightly from Jim Lahey’s My Bread (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009, $37.50)

3 cups (750 mL) bread flour
1¼ tsp (6 mL) table salt
¼ tsp (1 mL) instant yeast
1 ¹/³ cups (325 mL) cool water, at 55°F to 65°F (12°C to 18°C)

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, salt and yeast. Add the water and, using a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until you have a wet, sticky dough, about 30 seconds. Make sure it’s really sticky to the touch; if it’s not, mix in another tablespoon or two of water.

(Note: I’ve had to use more water almost every time. I suspect it’s because Calgary is so dry.)

Cover the bowl with a plate, tea towel or plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature (about 72°F/22°C), out of direct sunlight, until the surface is dotted with bubbles and the dough is more than double in size.

This will take a minimum of 12 hours and (Lahey’s preference) up to 18 hours. This slow rise -fermentation -is the key to flavour.

When the first fermentation is complete, generously dust a work surface (a wooden or plastic cutting board is fine) with flour. Use a bowl scraper or rubber spatula to scrape the dough on the board in one piece.

When you begin to pull the dough away from the bowl it will cling in long, thin strands (this is the developed gluten), and it will be quite loose and sticky, but do not add more flour.

Use lightly floured hands, a bowl scraper or spatula to lift the edges of the dough toward the centre. Nudge and tuck in the edges of the dough to make it round.

Place on a piece of parchment paper, seam side down. Cover with a clean towel and place in a warm, draft-free spot to rise for 1 to 2 hours. The dough is ready when it is almost doubled in size.

Half an hour before the end of the second rise, preheat the oven to 475°F (240°C), with a rack in the lower-third position and place a covered 4½ to 5½ quart (4¼ to 5 L) heavy pot in the centre of the rack.

Using pot holders, carefully remove the preheated pot from the oven and uncover it. Gather up the dough by holding the four corners of the parchment paper and place the entire thing, paper and all, into the pot.

Cover the pot and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the lid and continue baking until the bread is a deep chestnut colour, but not burned, 15 to 30 minutes more.

Use a heatproof spatula or pot holders to carefully lift the bread out of the pot and place it on a rack to cool thoroughly. Don’t slice or tear into it until it has cooled, which usually takes at least an hour.

Makes one large loaf.

This article first appeared in the Calgary Herald’s Real Life section. For more delicious recipes, visit CalgaryHerald.com/life.

Baking, Desserts

Fruit Cobbler Cake

October 17, 2010 2 Comments

Look! It’s more peach-related baking.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I only had one peach by the time I finally got around to this cake from Julie over at Dinner with Julie, so I had to get a little creative with the other fruit I had bought from the Farmer’s Market the weekend before, adding a nectarine and some blackberries to the mix.

(And I feel a little bit badly posting this since peach season is just about over for the year. Sorry!)

Julie’s version used rhubarb (and I kind of wish I had thought of this recipe when that fruit was still available. Must keep in mind for next year), but pretty much any fruit will work. The only adjustment that needs to be made is to the amount of sugar you sprinkle on over top. Rhubarb, with it’s tart flavour, needs more sugar. These needed barely any. And in an effort to get creative, I actually used large-grained raw sugar, which probably gave it a much more caramel-like flavour on top.

As you can see in the photo, it, uh, caramelized the edges of the cake. Actually, truth be told, I was freaking out the whole thing was going to burn before the centre was finally cooked. But people seemed to like it quite a bit (favouring the edges where it hit more of the batter and less of the fruit), but next time I’d like to try it with straight-up sugar to see what kind of difference it makes.

I liked the idea of this cake, the way it bakes up around the fruit, enveloping it even. And it didn’t disappoint.

It’s definitely one to keep in mind when next summer gets going or, even better, when you are craving a taste of summer and the fruit isn’t exactly ripe and delicious enough to eat on its own. Baking it into this cake will elevate it, I swear.

This recipe, like so many good ones, comes from Julie over at Dinner with Julie. (And hey, while you’re over there, check out her peach bran muffins recipe, which I also made and was fabulous.)

Fruit Cobbler Cake

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
2 – 4 cups assorted fruit (rhubarb, strawberries, peaches, plums, nectarines, blackberries etc. I used a peach, a nectarine and a scattering of blackberries in my version)
1/8 to 1/2 cup sugar (depending on the tartness of the fruit; rhubarb, for example, would need a greater amount of sugar)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until well combined and starting to get fluffly. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each, then beat in the vanilla.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir by hand or beat on low speed just until combined; the batter will be thick. Spread into a 9″x13″ pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and scatter the fruit over top. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 45-50 minutes, until the cake is golden and the cakey parts springy to the touch.

Makes one large cake.

Baking, Desserts

Peach Upside Down Cake

October 10, 2010 6 Comments

In a rash move, I bought a whole bunch of peaches a couple of weeks ago. And then, when those had run out, I bought some more. Some of you may have already enjoyed the Peach, Prosciutto, Rosemary and Goat Cheese flatbread, which resulted from this sudden and inexplicable need to purchase peaches. But, wait, there’s more! Since it became clear I was going to need to bake with some of them, as they all began to ripen at once, I became fascinated by the idea of making a Peach Upside Down Cake.

I never really understood the love affair with pineapple upside down cakes (maybe it’s my aversion to maraschino cherries), but I do like the idea of fruit getting baked into the bottom of a cake and then being turned out so it becomes the decorative topping. They’re just so darn pretty.

Now would be a good time to praise my digital kitchen scale because, well, this recipe is almost completely in weights, with the exception of the eggs and vanilla.

That said, I absolutely do love my digital kitchen scale, which was a gift from my mum one Christmas. It is, by far, one of the most used gadgets in my kitchen. It’s super handy for measuring butter (since I always have to cut mine to measure because we don’t have “sticks” of butter up here and it gets tricky sometimes trying to carve off the appropriate amount from the blocks we have up here) and I now use it exclusively when making no-knead bread (post coming soon) because I can just tare it off before adding the next ingredient. And, of course, a lot of European recipes only use weights, which makes the scale essential.

I don’t usually encourage people to purchase additional things for the kitchen (cough, cough, except for the clearly essential rasp, which I have talked often about; mine is from Lee Valley Tools), but I do believe this is a useful tool. Ok, moving on.

This cake was seriously delicious and oh-so-pretty. The brown sugar and butter-topping created a moist, topping and the peaches were perfect. The cake was relatively light and nicely spiced, so the perfect complement to the rich topping and cooked fruit.

And, perhaps more importantly, it was really quiet easy. But the gorgeous presentation doesn’t suggest that at all, making it an ideal cake for sharing with friends. (Which I did!)

I have no idea how I stumbled on to this recipe, but it came from Kerrisdale Design Inc.

Peach Upside Down Cake

3 ounces brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 peaches, peeled and cut into 1/2″ slices
6 ounces unsalted butter
3.5 ounces brown sugar
3.5 ounces white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
6.5 ounces all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 ounce baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7.5 ounces buttermilk

Heat the oven to 350 F and spray an 8-inch cake pan with non-stick spray. In the microwave or in a small pot on the stove, melt together the butter with brown sugar, mixing well. Pour the butter mixture into the prepared pan and layer the sliced peaches on top. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugars until well combined. Add the vanilla and eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions. In a separate bowl sift the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the buttermilk, starting and finishing with the flour. Pour the batter over the peaches and spread to the edges of the pan.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when lightly pressed and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan then turn out onto your serving platter. Allow to cool for an additional 30 minutes before slicing.

Baking, Desserts

Goodbye Cake

September 27, 2010 9 Comments

I have a new job!

After more than a dozen years of covering news at newspapers all over hell’s half acre in B.C. before finally making it to the big leagues — the Vancouver Sun, the Globe & Mail and, now, the Calgary Herald — I have just taken over as the new full-time, permanent food writer for the Herald.

In my time as a news reporter, I’ve written about the birth of a baby beluga, health care, education, dinosaurs in Tumbler Ridge, BC, the deaths of three women killed by men they once loved even after reporting their safety concerns to RCMP. I’ve spoken with ministers and a minor celebrity or two. I’ve sat through heartbreaking testimony and watched people break down in courtrooms. I’ve cried with the family members of homicide victims.

I’ve loved it and hated it, been moved by stories and frustrated by them too.

And now I’m trading covering crime and calamity for cake, the seedy underbelly of the city for pork belly and so on.

It is, no doubt, a dream job and I’m excited. But it wasn’t without some sadness that I left the great team of city reporters. (OK, yes, I basically just moved my stuff about 20 feet from my old desk and I’m still sitting right next to my city peeps, but it’s a whole different world.) Most of all, I miss the camaraderie of so-called Civilized Sundays when I’d bring in baking, like red velvet cake, which we would eat while listening to the police scanner. It’s not so much that I miss working Sundays (because I think I could really get used to this Monday-Friday thing), it’s the ritual of it all.

So, of course, on my last city shift, I had to bring in a cake!

I did a really informal twitter poll and people voted for a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. So, I found a recipe for both and got to work a few weekends ago. And, once it was baked, I thought it would be even better to slice the cake layers in half, double the icing and go for a quadruple-layer cake. For the most part that went well, barring some uneven slicing that led to some repair work to one of the layers. I hoped for the best cutting into it that I would bypass where things had gone sideways, but luck isn’t usually on my side. And it wasn’t this time around. So the beauty shot of the slice isn’t as good as it could be. (No doubt also because I didn’t let it cool down after putting on the icing, which would have made for a cleaner cut. But I was impatient (as usual) and just wanted to try a piece of the damn thing.

Barring that one piece, I gave half to some friends who just had a baby and took the rest in to work. Yes, we ate it for breakfast. And that made it perfect.

The cake recipe comes from Rock Recipes (though I have no idea how I stumbled on it originally), while the icing is from Joy of Baking.

Though both were fantastic, I wish I had tried something a little less overwhelming with the cake, like a lemon or basic buttercream. I have a feeling the chocolate icing overpowered the extremely vanilla cake instead of letting them better each other together.

Both are fantastic, though, and well worth trying on their own.

Vanilla Cake

1 1/2 cups cake and pastry flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs at room temperature
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup undiluted evaporated milk

Preheat oven to 325.

Sift together flours, baking powder and salt. Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy and pale. Add, one at a time, the eggs, beating well after each to make sure they are fully incorporated. Beat in vanilla. Gently fold in the dry ingredients, alternating with the evaporated milk, in three parts, starting and ending with the dry ingredients.

Divide batter evenly between 2 well greased 9-inch cake pans. (I also put parchment circles on the bottom to ensure a good release.) Bake in oven for about 35 to 40 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let cake rest in pans for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Frosting

(I doubled this recipe to have enough for a quadruple-layer cake. This is the recipe in its original measurements.)

8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet, chopped
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 cups icing sugar, sifted to remove lumps
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

In a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water, put the chopped chocolate, cocoa, milk, and butter. Stir until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and beat in, with a hand mixer or wire whisk, the confectioners sugar and vanilla extract. If the frosting is lumpy, strain through a strainer to remove any lumps. Cover and place the frosting in the refrigerator until it is firm (this may take a few hours). Once the frosting is firm remove from refrigerator and place in your mixing bowl. Beat the frosting for a minute or two or until it is nice and smooth and of spreading consistency.

Dinner, Vegetables

Shaved Asparagus Pizza

July 8, 2010 12 Comments

I have a confession: I am incapable of kneading. I don’t know if it’s a character defect, a lack of practice or sheer laziness, but I cannot seem to take a mix of flour and water and yeast and make it into a smooth mass that balloons into a beautiful ball of dough. I end up with something shaggy and ragged and, well, downright ugly.

When it comes to pizza crusts, I have tried to persevere. There have been a few successes (and one colossal failure where I essentially made a giant, pizza-sized cracker), but I was typically undone by my less-than-stellar kneading skills.

And then, a revelation: no-knead pizza dough.

It was a circuitous route that brought me to a place where I realized I too could easily make homemade pizza dough.

It started with shaved asparagus pizza.

I stumbled onto the idea on Smitten Kitchen — a popular food blog written by the charming Deb Perelman — and was immediately enchanted. Warm chewy crust, melted cheese and thin shavings of asparagus that would roast on top? Yes, please.

But, as Perelman pointed out, she was not the only one to think this would be a fantastic combination. Indeed, Jim Lahey, who revolutionized bread baking with his no-knead concept, serves a high-end version at his restaurant.

Surely, Lahey must have a pizza dough recipe.

Yes, yes he does. And it doesn’t involve kneading.

Sold!

This time, the dough is intentionally shaggy and ugly. And, after a few stirs and some squishing together of the ingredients (I can’t even bring myself to call it kneading), it only wants to be left alone for two hours.

When finally baked, it has a pleasing crispness with just an appropriate amount of chew. Topped with a tangle of shaved asparagus that had roasted and intensified in flavour, along with the richness and slight salt of the cheese, this is something I could eat over and over.

My first taste of asparagus came in Grade 10 when my boyfriend made me dinner one night and steamed some to go with steaks. I don’t remember much about that meal other than feeling overwhelmingly shy and excited to have a boy I liked cook for me.

Since then, I’ve grown to love the green-stalked vegetable and I’ll take it just about any way it can be prepared. Roasting, though, is my favourite because I like how it slightly caramelizes the tops and intensifies the flavour.

This pizza takes advantage of that, particularly because you shave the asparagus. None of the stalks shave perfectly, so you end up with varying thicknesses of asparagus strips, each of which cook slightly differently. Some will caramelize, while others will still retain a slight bite to them.

The beauty of pizza is that it is infinitely adaptable and this recipe is no exception.

While I used buffalo mozzarella cut into rounds and a sprinkle of Parmesan, I was tempted to throw on some bits of goat cheese as well and will probably try that next time. A squeeze of lemon would have been nice at the very end. Like it spicy? Toss on some red pepper flakes.

Lahey’s version uses some rather fancy cheese, quail eggs and shaved black truffles.

But even with slightly less-glamorous ingredients, this dish is delicious.

P.S. This crust was so good that I made another batch about four days later. Yes, I have a pizza problem.

Shaved Asparagus Pizza
Crust, from Jim Lahey’s My Bread

3 ¾ cups (925 mL) bread flour
2 ½ teaspoons (12 mL) instant yeast
¾ teaspoon (3 mL) table salt
¾ teaspoon (3 mL) plus a pinch sugar
1 1/3 cups (325 mL) room temperature water (about 72F or 23C)
1 to 2 teaspoons (5 to 10 mL) olive oil for pans

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, yeast, salt and sugar. Add the water and, using a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until blended, at least 30 seconds. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature until the dough has more than doubled in volume, about two hours.
Using a bowl scraper or rubber spatula, remove the dough from the bowl onto a floured work surface. Gently form into a rough ball. Then divide the dough into two halves (to make his two 13×18 – 33×45 cm – pizzas or, do as I did, and divide into three parts for round pizzas) spacing them 4 inches (10 cm) apart, and cover with a moistened kitchen towel for 30 minutes.

Pizza, from Smitten Kitchen:

½ pound (250 g) asparagus
¼ cup (50 mL) grated Parmesan
½ pound )250 g) mozzarella, cut into rounds, shredded or cubed
2 teaspoons (10 mL) olive oil
½ (2 mL) teaspoon coarse salt
black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 500F (260C).
Using the rough end as a handle, hold the asparagus against a cutting board and use a vegetable peeler to make long strips. (I got anywhere between two to five shavings from each stalk depending on how thick they were or how easily the peeler went through the asparagus. They were also of varying thicknesses, which is fine.) After shaving, you should just be left holding the rough end, which can be discarded. Repeat with all of the asparagus.
In a bowl, toss together asparagus, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Roll out or stretch dough to create 12” (30 cm) round. (Lahey calls for it to be stretched by hand, but I used a rolling pin and did only a bit of hand stretching after getting the dough on the pan.) Brush olive oil on pan and transfer dough.
Sprinkle on Parmesan, then add mozzarella. Top with asparagus strands.
Bake for 10 to 15 minutes until crust is golden, cheese is melted and asparagus is roasted.

This story first appeared in the Real Life section in the Calgary Herald. For more delicious recipes, visit CalgaryHerald.com/life.

Baking, Desserts

French Silk Pie

July 8, 2010 5 Comments

I love Jason Segel.

He meets most of my criteria for ideal man: tall, not overly thin nor athletic and oh-so-funny. (Or, as my friend once described as “tall, broad, goofy guy.”) You can have your pretty boys, girls. Give me a man who can make me laugh and I’m a smitten kitten.

I know this isn’t really the place for romantic confessions, you know, being a food blog and all. But, sigh. And, I swear, it’s relevant.

I missed the first season of How I Met Your Mother because I couldn’t figure out when the program was on. Some kind friends lent me it and season 2 on DVD. I’m not admitting anything but I may have watched them both in just a handful of days. That started a lovely tradition of discussing each episode on Tuesdays over email and getting together for season finales.

My crush on Segal started there and has continued through Forgetting Sarah Marshall and then I Love You, Man. (Even though his hair in I Love You, Man was beyond ridiculous and, unfortunately, spilled over into HIMYM because I guess they were filming bits of both at the same time.) (And, may I add, my love of him has absolutely nothing to do with the full-nude scene in Sarah Marshall. Ahem.)

This year, my friends and I set up the date as soon as we knew when the finale was going to air. I, naturally, offered to bring dessert. But, while Dawn and I are fans of anything lemon, Chris is less than interested in citrus desserts. For him, it’s chocolate all the way. I’m not against broadening my horizons away from lemon and I felt like it would be nice to cater to someone else’s tastes for once. Plus, c’mon, chocolate pie? I’m still all over that.

I thought this would be great with a straight-up pie crust and tried that vodka pastry recipe from Cook’s Illustrated that set the baking world on fire. (It’s a wet, easily workable dough that uses part water and part vodka. The vodka evaporates leaving this stunningly flaky crust without all the fuss.) Yes, it was easy to work with and I think it would have been fantastic if I hadn’t rolled it so thin that the bottom got a little too brown. Not burnt, but brown enough that I just couldn’t bring myself to serve it to friends. Yes, I’m a perfectionist.

So, I then went with a graham cracker crust because
a) I had the ingredients
b) It’s a lot harder to screw up.

I loved photographing how this came together, especially the part where I got to mix in the chopped chocolate to the custard base, watching the cream and brown swirl together.

The only hitch in all of it was this thing seriously took forever to set. That’s why there are no photos of slices because it was still setting while I was driving over to my friends’ house. I had set the tart tin on a baking sheet on the floor of my car and was freaking out every time I had to come to a stop as I watched the chocolate goo ripple slightly. We immediately put it in the fridge when I got there and let it chill for another three hours. It was perfect when it came time to cut in, but it was far too late for pictures. And, frankly, we just wanted to eat the damn thing.

It was so good.

Richly chocolate, smooth without being gloppy. It slumped ever-so-slightly in that perfectly decadent way. As if it was so full of goodness that it couldn’t contain itself.

I have it on good authority (OK, he was dimed out by his wife) that another slice or two went down after I left before bed time.

Yeah, it’s that good.

French Silk Pie

For crust:

1 1/3 cups graham cracker crumbs
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup sugar

For filling:

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large egg yolks
3 cups whole milk
5 oz fine-quality bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
2 oz unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla

For topping:

3/4 cup chilled heavy cream
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon cocoa powder, for dusting OR a small chunk of dark chocolate, shaved with a grater or rasp

Crust:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Stir together crumbs, butter and sugar and press into 9″ pie plate or tart tin. Bake until slightly golden, about 15 minutes. Let cool on a rack.

Filling:

In a heavy-bottomed pot, whisk yolks, sugar, cornstarch and salt until well combined. Add milk in a stream, while still whisking. Over medium heat, while still whisking, bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, still whisking, for about a minute. The filling will be quite thick.

Sieve the filling into a large bowl. Whisk in chocolates, butter and vanilla and stir until everything is melted together and fully incorporated. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing it against the custard mixture to keep it from forming a skin. Let cool completely, about two hours.

Spoon filling into cooled crust and then chill all together in the fridge for at least six hours. (Mine took more like eight.)

When ready to serve, beat whipping cream with sugar until it hold soft peaks. Cover pie and dust with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings.

Baking, Desserts

Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

June 8, 2010 10 Comments

There is often debate among brownie fans on whether it is better to be fudge-y or cake-y. I have mostly stayed away from this because I’m not enough of a brownie enthusiast to really care one way more than the other.

Besides, the only thing that really matters when it comes to the brownie is the slightly crisped edges and the crackled top. For me, that is where the beauty of the brownie lies.

But, let’s face it, unless you have one of those special “all edge” pans with their labyrinthine shape, someone is getting stuck with the middle bits.

And that’s how I thought things would always be, until I tried these flourless chocolate-walnut cookies.

OK, they are not brownies. For someone like me, they are even better. They are cookies that taste like the crinkled surface layer of a brownie with its slight chew and crackle goodness, studded with chunks of walnuts.

To be honest, flourless chocolate cookies were not high on my list of things to bake when I stumbled across the recipe. But I came upon it after I had put some egg whites in the freezer, unsure what to do with them after using up the yolks.

I could have saved them for a pavlova, but figured it was worth trying out something new.

The list of ingredients was straightforward, if not a bit puzzling. I’ve never measured out three cups of icing sugar for a cookie recipe before.

Nor was I actually convinced that the airy ingredients would transform in the oven to some sort of cookie delight.

However, it did have a few things going for it: I already had egg whites ready to go and the recipe reminded me of a package of cookies I bought from a chain store grocery store once.

I served them to friends with a dollop of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between: a gourmet version of the childhood treat. It seemed worthwhile to see if these could compare. Or, as the case ended up being, improve on the store bakery version. The chocolate chew and nuts in a tender cookie package were so right. And they were light and not overly sweet. (Though, that was dangerous too, as it was easy to eat more than one or two and feel I still had room for another.) Mine did not get as shiny as I have seen in other people’s photos of the same type of cookies.

Normally I’d get a bit worried. Or envious.

Why do mine look different?

But after sampling one — OK, several — of the cookies, I realized I didn’t care what they looked like. They were fantastic.

I have since found myself trying to find recipes that use up only yolks so that I can take advantage of this cookie recipe again.

Francois Payard’s Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

from New York magazine

2¾ cups (675 mL) walnut halves
3 cups (750 mL) confectioners/ icing sugar
1/2 cup plus 3 tbsp (170 mL) unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
1/4 tsp (1 mL) salt
4 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 tbsp (15 mL) pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Spread the walnut halves on a large-rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 9 minutes, until they are golden and fragrant. Let cool slightly, then move the walnut halves to a work surface and coarsely chop them.

Position two racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and lower temperature to 320°F (160°C). Line two large-rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk (or use an electric mixer on low speed) the confectioners’ sugar with the cocoa powder and salt followed by the chopped walnuts. While whisking (or once you change the speed to medium), add the egg whites and vanilla extract and beat just until the batter is moistened. Do not overbeat or it will stiffen.

Spoon the batter onto the baking sheets in 12 evenly spaced mounds, and bake for 14 to 16 minutes, until the tops are glossy and lightly cracked; shift the pans from front to back and top to bottom halfway through to ensure even baking.

Slide the parchment paper (with the cookies) onto 2 wire racks. Let cookies cool completely, and store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

This story first appeared in the Real Life section in the Calgary Herald. For more delicious recipes, visit CalgaryHerald.com/life.

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it

Share it