Much ado about nuffin'

This blog really should contain...


...and instead it contains...


At least, nuffin' since August. Boy howdy, the deadlines at work have been KILLING me. SRSLY. They are, however, all over now, so no more excuses!

I have been baking here and there when I've been able to, so let me dig up the ghosts of baking past.

Over the summer a work colleague was charged by the grandma-to-be with the task of hosting a baby shower that was more of a "classy tea party" than the "guess-the-poop diaper games" variant of the baby shower (yes, I've actually been to a baby shower in which melted chocolate bars were smushed into a diaper and we had to guess what the "poop" was for prizes. This is a thing that happened to me!). She didn't want cutesy or cheesy at this party, as most of the guests would be some older ladies who mightn't appreciate seeing baby bums everywhere.

This? Fine by me. I'm one of the silliest people I know, but when it comes to baking I love pretty things. Denyse gave me carte blanche to do whatever I wanted with 4 dozen mini cupcakes but hinted that she loved my lemon luxury cakes, so I made some "Silver and Gold" mini cuppies. Half were chocolate cupcakes with Raspberry buttercream sprinkled with silver dust and silver dragees, and the other half were lemon cupcakes with light and fluffy lemon cream cheese buttercream, sprinkled with 24k gold dust (edible gold, how I love thee) and topped with a gold dragee.

Speaking of gold dragees, those babies are HARD to track down outside of Christmastime! Bulk Barn didn't carry them, nor did 3 other bake shops that I patronized. My Wilton cake decorating class instructor bailed me out by selling me some from her shop (thanks Lynn!) Now that it's November and our lords will soon start a-leaping, I say do yourself a favour and STOCK. UP. NOW.

Reese Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake Bars

I'll give you a moment to wipe the drool off your chin.

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You done? Well, don't throw that tissue out just YET, because get a load of THIS:

Just baked, still cooling in the pan.

You can stop your cheesecakes from cracking by baking them in a water bath. I just didn't bother this time.

All cut into squares!

I could have done a better job with piping this chocolate, but at least I used a paper cornet!

Inside view of the deliciousness.

I served these at a BBQ recently and everyone loved them. I seriously couldn't stop eating them myself--which is a pretty lame quality in a hostess, I must say--but it speaks to just how gosh-durn yummy these are.

Here's the recipe for Reese's Cheesecake Bars. I didn't put a piece of PB cup on top like the recipe calls for because I ate three Peanut Butter cups before the bars were baked I didn't think they were necessary. Yeah THAT'S it.

Sugar Cookies Ahoy!

Oh my god you guys (henceforth to be abbreviated OMGYG), all I've been baking lately is sugar cookies. Roller derby has been the main culprit, but I of course use the term 'culprit' loosely because I love love love doing it. However through the process of baking and decorating cookies en masse for a vendor's table, I have learned that I need to work on my time management skills. And how.

For the last derby bout I made CHOCOLATE sugar cookies, and dipped them in purple and green Merckens (which is essentially white chocolate). Think Black & White Cookie meets Rollergettes.

However, poor time management = rushing to get cookies done and out the door in time = stress = forgetting to take pictures. However I did manage to squeeze off this one:

Chocolate sugar cookie, half naked.

I'll try to get more photos of these, because they were kind of cool when the were done. I mean, chocolate cookie dipped in white chocolate? WIN.

And speaking of sugar cookies, July 9th was National Sugar Cookie Day!* The fabulous Sugar and Meringue has put together a free sugar cookie e-booklet called "Cookies for a Cause" (hmm, sound familiar?) to raise money for the Great American Bake Sale to end child hunger. It's filled with links for donating to the cause.

OMGYG, check it out.


*not an official holiday, so don't take next July 9 off work no matter how badly you want to.

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Mocha Toffee Ice Cream

Previously I've mentioned how difficult it is to bake during the summer. Well it's true! We don't have air conditioning in our house--save for a window installment in the bedroom for comfortable sleeping--and when it's hot outside the last thing I want to do is make it hotter inside.

So that, paired with the fact that May was colossally busy (I should have known!), my "May Flours" mission was an absolute flop. There, I admitted it. I do, however, have several flours waiting at home for me to turn into some gluten-free wonderfulness, and as soon as I find a day where the house isn't a sauna, they're all yours babies!

In the meantime, I've been using my ice cream maker as modestly as I can, (read: it's a epic struggle against making ice cream every single day), and so far out of the three kinds of ice cream I've made, Mocha Toffee is the best.

This recipe is super easy to make since you don't have to temper eggs; just combine the ingredients, chill, and put into the ice cream maker!

I made it special for my BBQ guests over the May-24 weekend, and again when my lovely friend Jax flew from the West for a visit. I knew she'd love it, because one of our bonding activities in university was to get together late at night for study-break mochas!

Jax enjoys the crunchy toffee bits and smooth coffee chocolate flavour of my Mocha Toffee Ice Cream. Food porn!

Thanks to Cuisinart, from whom I yoinked this recipe. I'm a devoted fan!

Mars Bar Biscuits

I have a coworker from Northern Ireland (or, "NornIrn", the way her brogue curls around it) who brought in some Mars Bar Biscuits to work one day. After tasting one, my reaction was akin to this:


As she explains it, they're super-popular all over Ireland, and they're ridiculously easy to make. Although they're a Rice Krispie-based treat, they're easier to make than Rice Krispie squares, if you can believe it! Special bonus: you can very easily make this recipe Gluten-Free/Celiac safe*! You can find gluten-free/Celiac safe Krispies at any health food store, like Noah's here in Toronto.

*Although you'd think Rice Krispies are gluten-free since they are rice, they contain Malt (a barley derivative) which is not recommended for those with Celiac disease.

Step 1: Melt 4 Mars Bars together with 4oz butter. Melt on low heat JUST until all the big lumps are gone. Don't over-cook the mixture or you will carmelize your sugar and your bars will be hard instead of chewy. Trust me on this.

Step 2: Scale out 4oz of Rice Krispies, which you will weigh on your super-awesome digital scale. If you do not own a digital scale, well, what are you waiting for? Go! Right now. I'll wait.
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*plays Jeopardy music in head*
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Did you get one? Good. You are now super-awesome just for owning one. Your baking life has just gotten infinitely better, my friend.

Anyway.

Mix the 4oz of Rice Krispies into the melted Mars Bar/butter mixture. Dump the mixture into an 8x8 pan and smooth it out using a spatula.

Step 4: Melt 1 package of Hershey's Milk Chocolate chips (in the microwave or over a double boiler) and smooth them over the surface of your Krispies, like this:

Put them in the fridge to cool and solidify, but make sure you take them out of the fridge at least half an hour before you wish to cut them or the chocolate will crack. Cut them as large or small as you want, but I usually cut 5x5 which gives you over 2 dozen bars. They're smaller, but they pack a delicious punch.

Trust me on this, unless your friends hate chocolate (and why are you friends with those people anyway?), they will LOVE LOVE LOVE these. That is, if you don't eat the whole pan by yourself first!

Thanks to Barb for the easiest no-bake recipe I've ever used!

March 31: Whoopie Pies

Finally...the last post of March! I've been sitting on this badboy for a while, not having the opportunity to blog it until now. Well here it is! Can I get a 'whoop whoop'?

No? Anybody?

Well how about some WHOOPIE PIES?

I'd never heard of these crazy little cookies, let alone tasted one, but the name pretty much grabbed me the moment I read it. Apparently they're a Pennsylvania Amish treat, but I gotta say...it's hard to imagine the Amish making something so DECADENT. Yurm! (that's "yum" as said with a mouthful of Whoopie Pie.)

Essentially white icing sandwiched between to rich mini chocolate cakes, the Whoopie Pie is reminiscent of an Oreo (specifically, and Oreo "Cakester"), yet nothing in the Oreo history I have found mentions the Whoopie Pie. Perhaps it wasn't the inspiration for the Oreo like I imagined it would be. In any case, if given an opportunity to fight, the Whoopie Pie would beat the Oreo, hands down. You might say the Whoopie Pie would "whoop" Oreo's butt!

*groan* Okay I'm done.

Seriously though, I couldn't believe how tasty these are. The strong coffee used in the recipe deepens the flavour of the chocolate; you won't believe these are made with cocoa instead of real chocolate!

Also, they're surprisingly easy to make. I had these made, baked and sandwiched in an hour!

My only complaint: the use of shortening. The filling is half butter and half shortening, but I would change the ratio to 2:1 in favour of butter next time, because the filling didn't WOW me with its flavour. However, I suspect that it's not supposed to; the filling adds sweetness to a very chocolatey cookie and the whole thing just works. That's why, despite my not being a fan of shortening, these babies get a Final Grade of A+. The manfella also gives them his thumbs up seal of approval.

I almost don't want to give these away (more for me, haha!), but you can purchase your own Whoopie Pies for a good cause by sponsoring me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Make your donation, then email me your order!

You can find the recipe for Whoopie Pies on my Recipes Page.

March 29: Chocolate Crinkles

Chocolate Crinkles are the original cake truffle! Made with real chocolate, these little balls of brownies-meet-fudge are easy to make, roll and bake. Don't let their small size fool you; they're bursting with chocolatey flavour.

After you make up the dough, you roll each ball in a thick layer of icing sugar then bake.

As the dough bakes it expands, causing the dough to "crinkle". The dark brown chocolate colour shows through the white, causing an interesting looking contrast.

You must not over-bake these cookies! If you do, they will be hard lumps, rather than the chewy fudgy little treasures they're meant to be.

Final Grade: A. You can find the recipe for Chocolate Crinkles on my Recipes Page. To purchase your own Chocolate Crinkles for a good cause, sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Make your donation, then email me your order!

March 18: Brownies

Mmm...brownies. Although these goodies seem to stand in a class by themselves, (as my friend and coworker Sarah said, "But, but... those aren't cookies, they're brownies!") they are actually a sheet cookie just like Nanaimo Bars. Brownies tend to be categorized as either "cakey" or "fudgey", and since neither of those descriptions scream "cookie", therein lies the confusion. However an excerpt from Wayne Gisslen's Professional Baking will explain:

Sheet cookies are one of the easiest and least labor intensive of any category. A batter, which can be thin or stiff, is made up and evenly spread into a pan with sides. Some recipes include a cookie or crumb base that is pressed onto the bottom of a pan before a batter is poured over it. After baking, the cookies are cut into squares or even triangles or diamonds. There are endless varieties (e.g., Fudge Brownies).

• A "cakey" brownie is achieved by using less chocolate and butter, creaming the butter with the sugar rather than melting it with the chocolate, and aerating the batter.
• A "fudgey" brownie is achieved by using more chocolate and butter, melting them together and using more egg yolks.
• A "chewy" brownie is achieved by using more flour and more whole eggs.
  

See this wonderful article on the nuances of brownie creation for more info.

Anyway, I once again relied on my go-to website, Joy of Baking, for the recipe, because it featured my favourite kind of brownie: chewy. A chewy brownie is half fudgey and half cakey, so you get the best of both in one.

"Gggggaaaaaaarrrrr! Arrrrhhhn."
(Chewie likes his brownies...uh, chewy.)

Le Creuset love!

Cutting the brownies into 2-bites. I love the crinkle texture on top.

These brownies were perfect, in my humble opinion, and I was especially pleased to once again get to use the Le Creuset square baker in kiwi that I won from Carol Ann's giveaway. That reminds me, your THANK YOU brownies will shortly be on their way, CAM!

You can find the recipe for Brownies on my Recipes Page.

If you'd like to order some of your own Brownies, please sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Simply make your donation, then email me your order!

March 15: Fancy Icebox Cookies

Last night an Icebox Cookie saved my life
Last night an Icebox Cookie saved my life, yeah
'Cause I was sittin' there feelin' like death
And in just one breath, it said
"All you gotta do is get up, you got get up, and slice me girl"

Last night I was stricken with my third migraine in the span of a week. I ran to my wonderful chiropractor (shout-out!) who treated me, and while I was sitting there in the dark room bawling my eyes out, all I could think about was cookies. As in, "Am I going to toss mine?"

Ew. TMI.

But seriously, I was worried that I'd be too useless to bake the March 15 batch, when I realized that I'd planned for just such an occasion by making a batch of Icebox Cookies a couple weekends ago.

Now I'm no masochist; I went home and took hours to recover. And when I was finally able to stand, all I had to do was slice these babies and bake 'em. I was on my feet for maybe 15 minutes total.

Slice and bake: on the cooling rack.

What's perfect about an icebox cookie is that you can do a lot with them: you can make plain vanilla or chocolate, or marble the two, or make checkerboards or bullseye cookies or WHATEVER, roll them and wrap them in plastic and refrigerate them for a week or two, or freeze them for months. When you know company's coming, pull them out, thaw them on the counter for 10 minutes, and slice them and bake. That way you'll always have fresh baked cookies around, and you spend almost no time or effort on the day you need them.

Pause for a short brainstorm: You could also make Neopolitain Icebox Cookies by making 2 vanilla doughs and 1 chocolate dough. Flavour 1 vanilla dough with strawberry extract and use red food colouring to make the dough pink. Layer all three and VOILA!

Anyway, I like a good challenge, so I tried making checkerboard cookies for the first time. It was certainly a learning experience; while the chocolate dough I made was a perfect consistency, the white dough was so weak and prone to ripping that it was almost impossible to work with. (The formula in my Professional Baking textbook called for pastry flour, but I think I'd use all-purpose next time to yield a stronger dough.) Lifting it onto the chocolate was a nightmare, so I was surprised I got anything even remotely resembling a checkerboard pattern at all.

Checkerboard...ish.

The recipe also said to roll the dough to 1/4" thickness, but I think this was too thin. I would go a full 1/2" next time to give perfect squares.

While not the perfect checkerboard pattern, these cookies still look pretty cool, and they taste great. Oh, and I got to make marble cookies out of my checkerboard scraps, and you can't mess these up!

Just don't overknead when making marble cookies or you will blend your doughs together and lose the marbling.

You can find the recipe for Fancy Icebox cookies on my Recipes Page (will appear later when I can type up the recipe).

If you'd like to order some of your own Checkerboard cookies, please sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Simply make your donation, then email me your order!

March 13: Double Chocolate Cookies

When I made the first draft of the March cookie schedule, Double Chocolate cookies were not on the list. I was trying to get a very broad range of cookies, and trying to avoid "duplicates" or recipes that were too similar. To me, I already had a chocolate chip cookie, so I figured Double Chocolate cookies had no place in the march.

The irony? When I went to make today's cookie, Lebkuchen--a German cookie recipe--I had a bout of déjà vu upon reading the ingredient list. Sure enough...Lebkuchen is almost the same as Basler Läckerli, but with added molasses! Sneaky sneaky...but I caught the mistake before starting mise en plus, and--realizing the error of my ways--made Martha's Double Chocolate cookies instead.

Boy howdy I'm glad I did!

These chocolate cookies provide a nice crispy outside to accompany the chewiness of the cookie, and are rich in the good way. And using coarse salt instead of iodized insures you get that ever-so-slight salty/sweet contrast that is a nice surprise in a chocolate cookie. The only thing I'd change is to chill the dough before baking it so that it doesn't spread out, as the cookies ended up a little thin for my liking.

Final Grade: A. You can find the recipe for Double Chocolate cookies on my Recipes Page.

If you'd like to order some of your own Double Chocolate cookies (packaged all pretty like this^), please sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Simply make your donation, then email me your order!

March 12: Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

Macaroons refer to a wide variety of cookie. Some consist primarily of almonds, some are mostly plain coconut, and some even have a jam center. While I am a fan of macaroons in all their permutations, I chose to make my very favourite macaroons from childhood: Chocolate Coconut Macaroons.

These macaroons turned out wonderfully...the chewiness of the coconut provided a delicious base for rich chocolate flavour. The sightly gooey centre is also a nice contrast to the crispier outside.

Final Grade: A+ You can find the recipe for Chocolate Coconut Macaroons on my Recipes Page.

If you'd like to order some of your own Chocolate Macaroons, please sponsor me for the Daily Bread Food Bank's Spring Challenge! Simply make your donation, then email me your order!

March 4: Nanaimo Bars

I am a long-time fan of Nanaimo Bars, but a first time baker (and I use the term loosely, as these are no-bake bars). I've only made them once before, ages ago, and used a box mix (ew). I have since come to see the error of my ways.

The Nanaimo bar originated in Ladysmith, British Columbia (south of Nanaimo) in the early 1950s. A local housewife named Mabel Jenkins submitted the recipe to the annual Ladysmith and Cowichan Womens Institute Cookbook fundraiser. It became popular, especially in company towns, and was sold in many of the coffee shops on Nanaimo's Commercial Street. Tourists in the region came to refer to these as "Nanaimo Bars".

Not knowing which recipe to use, I defaulted to my go-to website, Joy of Baking. The recipe went rather smoothly, save for the fact that I don't own a 9x9 pan. However, upon looking in my cupboard for a 9x9 pan, I discovered that I own six (count 'em, 6) 8x8 pans, including my latest and greatest addition which I won for free: the Le Crueset square baker in kiwi!! But I digress...

Mise en plus. Most of my baked goods are stuffed into Mason Jars and labelled with a Sharpie. I also got to use the vanilla I picked up in Mexico (the best I've ever used) and the cocoa I bought in the Dominican.

I could have squished the recipe into an 8x8 pan, but this would have resulted in thicker-than-usual bars (desirable for some, not for others), but instead I doubled the recipe knowing the recipe wouldn't pan out (har har) properly, resulting in THREE batches of Nanaimo bars: one for work and two for freezing/selling (Nanaimo Bars freeze very well, as evidenced by the fact that you can purchase them frozen at M&M Meats). YUM!

The harsh light of day. Easier to face with Nanaimos for breakfast!

The recipe turned out well; sweet without being cloying, and though I feel the base crust could have been less crumbly. My suggestion would be to add a bit more melted butter in order to bind it together. Also, I didn't feel like chopping walnuts last night, and since I already had chopped hazelnuts ready to go, I swapped them out, to the recipe's benefit I'd say. It's like a Ferrero Rocher...in Nanaimo form!

Zoom...

More zoom...

MAXIMUM DELICIOUSNESS ACHIEVED.

Final grade: A-. Points lost for crumbly crust (just add more melted butter and you'll be fine!) but overall, a great bar cookie. See the Nanaimo Bar recipe, including my comments and suggestions on my Recipes Page.

To order these "Cookies for a Cause" please click this link to donate at my Daily Bread Food Bank fundraising page.