TWD: Upside-down Rhubarb Cake

We used frozen rhubarb from our garden last year and only had enough to make half the recipe. We put it in an 8x8 pan and the cake turned out pretty good! The caramel got overcooked- probably because the instructions didn't give a temperature. Overall though the cake tasted good, especially with powdered sugar sprinkled on top! You can get the recipe here.

TWD: (No) Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm glad there was an easy recipe this month because I definitely didn't have time for croissants! We altered these a bit because we don't drink coffee, so they just ended up being chocolate chip cookies. They were fine, but not amazing, probably because we altered the recipe. They do make awesome dough though! Not quite as good as my favorite, but that's hard to beat :)

TWD: Boca Negra

What a decadent chocolate cake! I am not sure if we'll be making this again though. It was really hard to tell when it was done. The directions said that it was done once a crust formed on top, but after I took it out of the pan it was still really goopy for my tastes, so we put it back in for a while. We made a couple ramekin sized cakes and a big one to give away, so luckily we got to experiment. We found that we liked the cakes best when they were cooked to 195-200 F. Perhaps since we know that, they might be worth another whirl. They were quite rich, and delicious. The white chocolate cream (basically ganache) was wonderful! I'd definitely make that again. If you want the recipe for both, you can find it here. I substituted water and chocolate extract for the bourbon in the cake and vanilla extract with a little less white chocolate in the ganache.

Cookie (Treat) Advent Update

Here's an update on out Christmas Cookie (now Treat) Advent. We've actually kept it up every day, but added more variety so that we don't get bored. A few days, the treats disappeared too quickly for pictures, so we're planning on making those again to get some good shots! We literally have crumbs left of one of the cookies, which while delicious, don't look that appetizing. Some others aren't worth mentioning (I'm looking at you coconut caramels). All of the following were a success!

Alpine Mint Brownies

These are the best mint brownies I've ever had. Hands down. And my lucky couple friends we shared them with agree! I usually don't like fudgy brownies because they often end up gooey in the middle or over-baked., but I now understand why they're called fudgy brownies. These were actually the texture of fudge! They converted me. We followed the recipe, except I'm not a fan of normal McCormick mint extract, so we used 1/8 teaspoon peppermint oil instead. 

Cottage Cheese Pufflets

These were quite delicious! The cottage cheese in the dough threw me off, but mostly it just made the dough really flaky. When you picture these, think of super flaky handheld pies. We filled them with homemade currant jam. 

Finnish Pulla

Kyle made this today. We love it so much that there's only a third left. Make it sometime. Plan to not eat much else that day.

French Butter Cookies

These are like those Christmas cookies that come in a tin, but so much better! They're pretty easy, too. We altered the recipe just a little. We left out the salt and used a really good quality Amish salted cultured butter instead. They had a wonderful slight tang. 

Brown Butter Ginger Cookies

This picture doesn't do the cookies justice, but these were amazing. These were the only two left! They were supposed to have frosting and be sandwiched together, but we loved them as was too much to mess with it. 

Alfajores

These were really good, but way too much work for me to make them again. If I did, I'd use a purchased dulce de leche. 

Gooey Butter Cookies

These are Kyle's favorites. They taste exactly like their name. I don't love them as much because I prefer a firmer cookie, but if you're in the gooey cookie camp, you'll love these!

Jam Thumbprints

These were good thumbprint cookies, but not particularly amazing. 

Gingerbread!

This was our first time making real gingerbread houses. We had our friends the Messerly's over for some decorating fun! Some of the reviews of the recipe above said it wasn't very flavorful. We doubled the cinnamon and cardamom in the recipe and would have doubled the ginger, except we ran out. It tasted pretty good, and was also really sturdy for construction. We made some royal icing for building and decorating, and some brown butter icing for delicious eating!

TWD: Finnish Pulla

Okay, so I have to update what I said about the best ever brownies last time. This is my new favorite recipe from Baking with Julia! We made it as part of our Christmas Treat Advent today. I've honestly never had better soft bread in my life. It's slightly sweet with a perfectly balanced hint of cardamom. The sliced almonds and pearl sugar on top add great textural contrast.  If you still don't believe how good this is, we baked it tonight and there is only this much left:

I just keep going back for one more slice! Honey makes it even better.

I would never attempt a bow again though. It was harder than the braid and pretty much blended into the loaf. Other than that, I would definitely make this again! Kyle mixed up the dough as written, except we didn't have cardamom seeds, so he just used 1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder. I'm pretty sure this would still be good without the pearl sugar, so if you don't have that, give it a try anyway! Here's the recipe and other blogger's experience. 

TWD: Gingerbread Baby Cakes

This recipe ended up looking very pretty, but I don't think it'll be one that we repeat.  We made one substitution: we replaced the espresso powder with extra cocoa powder.

You can find the recipe here.

Cookie Advent 2012: Swedish Dream Cookies, Snickerdoodles, and Pecan Chocolate Chip

I tried to do a cookie advent last year which I ended up giving up on for a few reasons. First, it got kind of crazy. Second, I was trying to follow someone else's list of cookies, which didn't always line up with my tastes. This year we decided to try again, but this time choosing all the cookie recipes ourselves! So far, it's going much better. We'll see if we can keep it up! If you invite us over in the next month, expect a plate of cookies when we show up :)

Here's our progress so far:

My favorites so far are a repeat from last year: Swedish Dream Cookies from Saveur. These are a light crispy cookie flavored with vanilla bean. They really do melt in your mouth! And they're the easiest cookies I've ever made. We didn't have vanilla sugar, so we substituted a vanilla bean and a tablespoon of sugar and they turned out great!

We also tried a new snickerdoodle recipe from Saveur. They were had a great intense cinnamon flavor since the batter was flavored as well, but I like Kyle's family's recipe better. I should probably post that someday.

Our third cookie so far was David Lebovitz's chocolate chip cookie recipe. I was a fan of the addition of chopped toasted nuts, but I wish we'd have used better chocolate since that's a main component of the recipe. I think I'll give it a go with some Valrhona or Scharffen-Berger next time! We did sprinkle some sea salt on them (a la another David's recipe) which was a good addition.

I'll keep you updated on our cookie adventures! Maybe they'll last this time :)

TWD: Best Ever Brownies

I love many kinds of brownies, but my favorites are my grandma's with marshmallows and frosting. Even though these don't quite beat those, they are still pretty awesome! I especially liked them with sea salt sprinkled on top. They're supposed to be a fudgy brownie, which I like, but after the recommended time they were a little too gooey for my taste. So, we cooked them a little longer and they turned out great! This is my favorite recipe so far from Tuesdays with Dorrie. Check out A Beautiful Mess for the recipe and here to see how it turned out for others. 

Thanksgiving Pies

We've been tasked with helping with pies for Thanksgiving, so we've been busy practicing lately! Here are a few of the results, in case you still need some ideas for Thanksgiving, or want some good pies for Christmas too!

Pear Cranberry Pie

This was my favorite new recipe we tried! The tartness of the cranberries was perfectly balanced by the sweet pears. We'll be making this for Thanksgiving and probably for Christmas too because it's so pretty! We followed this recipe from Serious Eats for Pear and Concord Grape Pie, but substituted cranberries for grapes. 

Apple Pie

This was from another Serious Eats recipe. We like more spice, so we used 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg. The flavor and crust were fantastic! The only problem we had with this one was the apples and crust puffed up while baking and then fell after cooling, even with par-cooking. The flavor and crust were excellent though, so it still made the cut. If you have any suggestions to prevent puffing or falling filling, let me know!

Chocolate Pecan Chess Pie

This is my favorite pie! I just love the combo of flaky crust and dense chocolate filling! I used the same recipe we did last year. I've found that since then, my taste for crusts has shifted toward more well done ones, so if you're in that camp I'd add an extra 10 minutes onto the blind baking time. But otherwise, this is perfect. If you like fudgy brownies, or dense chocolate pudding then this is your pie!

No Bake Strawberry Cheesecake

I'm behind on posting recipes, so it's already a little late this year for strawberries. Still, I think this recipe would be excellent with some of the late season raspberries that are available now. It would make a prefect smooth and creamy end of summer treat. You don't even have to turn on your oven! The berry flavor is the most prominent, so make sure to use good ones. This isn't a hard dessert to make, but it does take a little bit of time, so plan ahead. You can find the recipe over at the cooking channel.

Beignets

This was our first foray into fried food. I've always been scared of a pot of super hot oil, so we heated it up very slowly to avoid getting it too hot. Unfortunately our cowardice made the process take two hours. The next time we fried, we turned the heat on high and it went a lot faster. Luckily these were worth even the unnecessarily long wait! Crispy on the outside, soft but not doughy in the middle, these beignets covered in powdered sugar are the perfect fried dough. The recipe is from Leite's Culinaria, and I'll just direct you there since their instructions are perfect. 

TWD: Berry Galette

This was kind of a last minute dessert for me, but it turned out good anyway. Luckily it was pretty easy. It might have been the berries I had, but it wasn't as sweet as I like. Next time I'd put more sugar in the filling. Overall, I'd say it was a success! Hopefully next time I'll be more on top of things though. You can find the recipe here or here and see what others have done at TWD.

Finger Limes and Coconut Rice Pudding

I've been hearing a lot about finger limes lately, so a while back we decided to order some. Once they arrived, I realized I had no idea what to do with them! We tried eating them straight, and they were pretty good, but puckery. Finding any recipes was hard. Most are for seafood, and Kyle's not a fan.

 I decided that since they're tropical they'd probably go well with some coconut rice pudding. Well, I was definitely wrong. The two did not go well together at all. The limes are bright, tart and watery while the pudding is creamy and rich. The good news is that we loved the pudding on its own! Next time I get finger limes though, I think I'll buy fish and invite over a seafood loving friend.

Don't the insides look cool!

Bad combo, but good separate ingredients!

I've made this with different proportions of coconut milk and cow's milk and they've all turned out great. If you want to make this vegan, you can even use all coconut milk. Just make sure the total milk comes to 2 1/2 cups. Also, this easily doubles or more to feed extra mouths. And the leftovers are great cold straight out of the fridge. In fact, Kyle likes it better cold.

Coconut Rice Pudding

Serves 2

From America's Test Kitchen

1 cup water
1/2 cup medium grain rice
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1 1/2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Boil the water in a saucepan and add the rice and salt. Cover the pot, turn the heat down and simmer  and stir occasionally for 10 to 15 minutes until the water is absorbed. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and stir frequently while it cooks for another 45 minutes to an hour. It's done when a spoon can stand up in the pudding. Serve warm or refrigerate and serve cold. Whatever you do, don't serve with finger limes! Mangoes or bananas might be a good topping though. Their creamy texture would be a better match.

Chocolate Cream Pie

If you're searching for a decadent dessert for a special occasion, here it is! I found this recipe and made it for my birthday (I know friends, I'm way behind on posting). Growing up, I liked Marie Calllender's Chocolate Satin Pie for my birthday. There aren't any close to us, so I searched for a recipe to replicate it. Well, this one didn't replicate it. It completely surpassed the one I had always known! If you like smooth, creamy, and rich chocolatey-ness you should definitely try this recipe. This has become my new birthday standard!

You can find the recipe (and a much better picture) on Saveur's website. The only thing I changed was using Oreos for the crust because I couldn't find Nabisco wafers. Make sure to use high quality chocolate because that's the main flavor. We used 72% Valrhona  and unsweeted Scharffen Berger and loved it!

TWD: Hungarian Shortbread

I'm way late on this one, because we've been working on planting our garden. We officially finished the initial round today with a zucchini plant and some rhubarb. Although it's still too early to use my own rhubarb, the jam for this recipe was still fun to make.

We doubled the sugar in the jam because I've got more of a sweet tooth. It would probably have been okay with the recommended sugar since the shortbread was so sweet, but I didn't  want to take any chances. The funniest part of this recipe to me was grating the frozen shortbread dough. It ended up looking more like a mozzarella and tomato casserole when it went into the oven.

I think it turned out pretty well and much more dessert-like when it came out of the oven though. Overall I'd call this recipe a success!

You can find the recipe here or here.

TWD: Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

These tartlets were fun to make! These ended up being a lot easier than I thought they would be, especially using my food processor to make the crust. Basically you make a pie crust with cocoa added and then fill it with a chocolate, butter, sugar, and egg mixture. The filling is pretty similar to chocolate chess pie, but with some different mix-ins: biscotti, white chocolate and milk chocolate. The texture was fun, but unfortunately I slightly overbaked my crust on the pre-baking so the crust wasn't the best, but at least the filling turned out pretty good. I think in the future I'd bake the filling less too so that it would be a little gooier. I think I prefer the chess pie, but I'd have to give these another try to know for sure.

Sadly the sun had set by the time I finished, so you get to see some weird coloring

The tarts were especially good with some black raspberry dark chocolate ice cream!

You can find the recipe here, here, here, or here on our lovely host blogs!

Lemon Sparkle Cookies

This picture's been on my blog header since the beginning but I've never posted about it. I guess I figured there was some unwritten rule about not posting a recipe unless you made it while you were a blogger. My awesome friend found a picture of these on facebook and asked for the recipe, so I figured I'd share it with all of you.

I made these for Christmas, but they'd be awesome anytime. You can coordinate the colors to whatever holiday you're celebrating, like red for Valentine's Day! Basically they're scrumptious little bites of lemon-flavored goodness. And yes, they can be addicting. 

I got the recipe over at the kitchen and they have some awesome step-by-step photos so I'm just going to direct you over there. 

Waffle Brownies

You should get two things from the above picture. 1: I love frosting! 2: That was made in a waffle iron. (See lower left corner)

Since I've eaten one of these waffle brownies pretty much every night for the last few weeks (Kyle interjected, "Not quite every night"), I figured it's about time I shared them with you. These are seriously the quickest thing to satisfy your baked good chocolate craving. Mix together some simple ingredients, stick the batter in your waffle iron and in two minutes you're done! Of course, I love frosting, so I usually whip up a batch of that too. 

The other great perk about these besides the fast cook time is that the batter keeps in the fridge for a few days.  We've kept some batter in the fridge for a week and it still makes great brownies! This is good for portion control because a waffle sized brownie is a much better single serving than an 8 x 8 inch pan. Also, I actually like the brownies better on the second day. The refrigerated frosting melts slightly and creates the perfect contrast of textures: solid cool frosting, gooey melt, wonderfully crisp brownie with a soft inside. Unfortunately, the batter doesn't freeze very well. But I don't think you'll have much left over!

This is a recipe that I've enjoyed since I was a little kid. Making them was a blast then and still is! If you have kids, I'm sure they'd enjoy this too. They're chocolaty, delicious and fun!

Kyle's made pretty much all of our batches of these lately, so here's some advice from him. "The hardest part is combining the butter-cocoa mixture with the eggs. Also, be sure to use a lot of cooking spray. Otherwise the waffles will end up sticking a lot more to the waffle iron and outside will get overdone."

These can be made with both normal and Belgian waffle makers. Like normal waffles, the crispiness will be different, but they're all delicious! 

Waffle Brownies

Yield: Varies depending on size We get about 15.

8 tablespoons softened butter

7 tablespoons cocoa

4 beaten eggs

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat waffle iron and spray with cooking spray (We use the setting 4 out of 6 on ours. I have no clue what that translates to). Mix butter and cocoa. Mix in eggs. Add the rest of the ingredients and combine.  Drop onto waffle iron in desired size. Cook for 1-3 minutes depending on size. The heat setting and time might take some experimenting since waffle irons vary so much. Luckily we've had good ones that were both under-cooked and overcooked, so don't stress. After 2 or 3 rounds, you'll be a pro!

Frosting

1 pound (about 4 cups) powdered sugar

8 tablespoons softened butter

1/3 cup cocoa

2-4 tablespoons milk (or more if desired)

Mix powdered sugar, butter, cocoa and 2 tablespoons milk together. Add more milk to reach your desired consistency. Eat by the spoonful or on top of brownies.

Easy Flaky Pie Crust

I love pies. Good pies. Pies with flaky, buttery, crispy crust. I've finally found the easiest way to make pie crust just like that. 

This is the pie crust developed by Kenji from the Serious Eats  food lab that I mentioned in my pumpkin pie post. I love it so much I figured it deserved a post all it's own. The best part about it is obviously the taste and texture, but the easiness of making it is a close second. If you missed my first post a quick rundown of the process is that you make a butter flour paste with 2/3 of the flour and then quickly cut in the remaining third. This process ensures uniformity and eliminates guesswork so that you can add the same amount of water each time and not wonder if you got it right. I've now made this four times and it's been constantly delicious! 

I have a few tips for making this. If you have a scale use it! If you don't, I highly recommend getting one not just for this recipe but all baking recipes because volume measurements are very inaccurate. Make sure your butter is cold and actually follow the resting times of the dough in the fridge. If you want the dough to be easier to work with, you can sub in shortening for up to 6 tablespoons of butter. I usually do all butter or 4 tablespoons of shortening. If you don't have a food processor a stand mixer could work or you could even blend the butter and sugar by hand. It'll just take longer, and the results won't be quite as good. Be sure to actually make a paste in the beginning, nor just cut in the butter like you would with a normal pie crust recipe. Also, when blind baking these crusts I've found that pie weights on top of tinfoil or parchment work best for me. I tried docking (poking the crust all over with a fork), but I don't know if I didn't do it enough or what but my pie crust was severely malformed. Well on that happy note, have fun baking!

Check out the beautiful flaky layers on the pie crust cookie! (pie crust scraps baked with cinnamon sugar)

Easy Flaky Pie Crust

From Serious Eats

Science of it here

This makes enough for either one double crust or two single crust pies. In my 7 cup food processor I've had the most success with making half at a time.

12.5 ounces all-purpose flour (If you need to convert to volume a cup of flour is 5 ounces)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 1/2 sticks (20 tablespoons) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pats

6 tablespoons cold water

Put sugar, salt and 2/3 of the flour into a food processor and pulse a couple times to mix. Distribute the butter pats evenly over the surface. Pulse about 25 short times until the dough barely begins to clump and there is no more dry flour. Spread the dough evenly around and sprinkle the remaining flour. Pulse about 5 times until the dough just begins to break up. Transfer to a bowl and sprinkle the water over the top. Fold the dough using a spatula until it forms a ball. Divide the ball into two and form two 4 inch discs. Completely wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours. Use in your favorite pie recipe!

To blind bake:
Line the pie with aluminum foil or parchment and fill with pie weights, dried beans, or pennies. Bake in a preheated 400-425 oven for 25-35 minutes for partial baking (light golden brown to be baked again with filling) or 30-40 minutes for full baking (dark golden brown). Remove the pie weights halfway through.

Christmas Cookie Advent

I stated and gave up within a week. I was going to bake a new cookie recipe everyday from Saveur's cookie advent calendar. When I started this plan I wasn't thinking, obviously. I do bake often, but not everyday. It got to be a little crazy and not quite as much fun as it should have been, so I decided to drop the idea. I did find a couple good new recipes that I'll share with you though.

These brown sugar cookies are my favorite of the experiment. They're from Cooks Illustrated, not Saveur ( I decided to be flexible in my list). To give you an idea of how good they are I'll share an example. Tuesday night  Kyle and I made 5 dozen of these for my family (7 people including us). In the morning maybe 10 were left. If you need a last minute holiday treat, make these. They'll take you an hour for one batch (including browning butter, mixing and cooking) and they're my current favorite cookie. If you like caramel flavor, brown sugar and overall deliciousness these are the cookies for you. You can find the recipe here. I highly recommend the dark brown sugar, but I'm sure they'd be good with light, but not as caramely.

These other cookies are from the actual cookie advent. Of them, my favorite is the Drömkakor (pictured above) or Swedish Dream Cookie. They are light are crumbly and melt in your mouth. If you don't have vanilla sugar you can use the same amount of regular sugar and a few drops of vanilla extract.

Here the Swedish dream cookies are pictured with some coconut cookies which were also good but not as much as the other ones.

These are caramel crumb bars. They're pretty good, but next time I'd double the caramel layer.

Merry Christmas Eve! And happy baking to you and yours!