Tag Archives: baking

Christmas Hot Cocoa Cookies

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I am still alive. I am still hard at work. The semester being over, I have officially taken a headfirst nosedive into dissertation work in hopes that I can turn out a draft of a chapter by January sometime. Things are looking pretty good for this writing schedule (though, I will admit, that’s definitely aided by the fact that I’m writing a chapter about a project which I’ve been working on for two years now).

The problem with working around this time of year is that, inevitably, you’re going to be interrupted for the holidays. We will be leaving to spend Christmas in New York with my family for most of next week, thus meaning that I have to wrap any major work I was doing here before end-of-day on Monday. It’s sometimes tough to balance things like that: you know you need to go deep, but not so deep that you can’t ear-mark it in a place that’s feasible to return to. My research, much like my plants, will need to be glutted with sustenance so that it can self-sustain in my absence.

So I’ve been reading up a storm and ordering ILL books on delay so that I’ll have something to come home to (…other than my awesome bed).

In the meantime, I made the following Hot Cocoa Cookies for our department Holiday gathering. I thought they were incredibly awesome, and I hope you do too! I took the recipe from Rachel Ray but, as usual, cut it in half (her recipe makes 60 cookies… who in their right mind would need to make 60 cookies at a clip!?). Here’s my version, complete with serving suggestions at the bottom.

Ingredients 

2 oz. unsalted butter (half a stick)
3 4 oz. bars baking chocolate: two semi-sweet, one bittersweet.
¾ cup flour
1/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
¾ tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. salt
¾ cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract (I tend to use vanilla paste because I find it more flavorful)
15 large marshmallows

Procedure 

Chop the semi-sweet chocolate bars into small bits and melt them along with the butter in a saucepan. Stir frequently and melt over medium heat lest you risk scorching the chocolate. When this is good and melty, allow it to cool for about 15 minutes while you do other things.

Whisk together your flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt until the mixture is a uniform color.

Beat the sugar, eggs, and vanilla together (I use an immersion blender for this, but you probably should use an electric mixer if you have one) until the mixture is smooth and consistent. Mix in the cooled chocolate until everything is just blended and an even consistency/color. Slow the mixer down to a low speed and add the flour mixture in at least two batches until everything combines nicely. You don’t want to overwhelm the wet ingredients with the dry (it creates batter lumps if you do), so just add slowly and evenly until everything is nice and mixed.

Allow this to sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes, then shape into dough balls (I use a cookie-baller to do this, but you can also use a tablespoon if you want). These are RICH AND INTENSE, so you don’t want your cookies to be too big.

At this point, I set the dough to chill in the refrigerator overnight. You don’t have to, but it does prevent the cookies from spreading out too much when you bake them. You’ll want to fridge them for at least an hour if you opt for the instant gratification baking.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and arrange your dough balls on cookie sheets. I line my cookie sheets in parchment paper, but you could also use a Silpat if you have it. I also spray with cooking spray just for extra slippiness and ease of removal upon baking. This recipe yielded 32 cookies for me which went on to two cookie sheets of 16 cookies each.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until the tops of the cookies begin to crack.

While the cookies are baking, cut your marshmallows in half. Take the bittersweet chocolate bar and divide it into 32 small squares. Place one small square on the sticky side of each marshmallow.

When the cookies have hit their crackling stage, pull them from the oven. Insert a marshmallow, chocolate-side down, into each cookie pressing gently to ensure that you’re surrounding the chocolate with almost-baked cookie batter. Once every cookie has a marshmallow hat, put the whole shebang back in the oven for about 4 minutes, or until the marshmallows are a little bit gooey and a little bit golden.

You can garnish with grated chocolate over the top at this point and it does look really pretty! Allow the cookies to cool for about five minutes in the pans before transferring to a cooling rack. I would, honestly, serve these babies warm if at all possible (I’m picky about my marshmallows and only like them when heated to gooey perfection). If you can’t serve them right from the oven, reheat them for a few minutes before putting them out and encourage guests to eat them quickly. Nom.

 

 

Pretzel!

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Finals in full swing and a Nor’Easter raging outside, it can only mean one thing: bake-tastic baking!

I’m a softie for soft pretzels.  When I made these the first time, my ever-wonderful partner in crime asked me where I got them.  When I said “pinterest” he was confused because he was pretty sure that I had bought them from a professional rather than made them myself.  In short: this recipe will not steer you wrong, folks!  Enjoy it with some really good Dijon (I have personally taken to doing a 1 part Grey Poupon to 1 part whole-grain country mustard for optimal deliciousness).

Since these pretzels really only keep for two days or so, I do a half batch from the original recipe.  It means that we can eat them before they lose their doughy goodness.  Here’s my take on Sally’s delicious soft pretzels:

Ingredients

¾ cup warm water
1 packet (1/4 oz) Fleishmann’s active dry yeast; about 2 ¼ tsp
½ tsp kosher salt
½ Tbs light brown sugar
½ Tbs unsalted butter
approx. 2 cups all purpose flour
1 large egg
coarse sea salt to taste

Directions 

Proof your yeast by dissolving it with a tiny pinch of sugar into the warm water.  You want the water to be inside-of-wrist warm (technically 95 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit).  Cover and let stand in a warm dark place for about eight minutes.  If, when you come back, the mixture is bubbly, it means that your yeast is alive and good to go.

Melt your butter in the microwave (you want it just melted, not scorching) and add it to the yeast mixture along with the kosher salt and brown sugar.  Stir this until the mixture is uniform.  Slowly add your flour one half cup at a time until the mixture is thick and no longer sticks to the side of the bowl.  If 2 cups doesn’t do it, add up to 1/8 of a cup more.  If you can poke the dough with a finger and have it bounce back at you, then you know that it’s the correct consistency.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead it for approximately three minutes.  When you kneed, you’re strengthening the gluten (the long fibers which hold the dough together).  You know that you’re done kneading if the dough is smooth and slightly tacky, and if it holds its shape when held into the air.  When this is done, work the dough into a nice round ball.

Spray a mixing bowl with nonstick spray and place your dough ball in there.  Cover and allow to rise in a warm dark place for ten minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and line a prepare a baking sheet.  I like to line mine in parchment paper with a thin coat of nonstick spray for good measure.  If you have a Silpat, you can use that instead.

Cut your dough into three long sections and roll them into long thin ropes.  Slice the ropes into bite-sized sections (I got about 37 from this recipe, but it depends on how big you want your bites!).

Now comes the key part: the baking soda bath.  While this is the most pain in the butt portion of the recipe, it’s also vital to ensure proper pretzel consistency).  Boil about 4 cups of water with ¼ cup of baking soda.  When it has worked up to a good rolling boil, drop in 8 or so bites at a time and allow to boil for 20 seconds.  With a slotted spoon, remove the bites and put them on your baking sheet.  Repeat until you’ve boiled all of your bites.

Beat the egg and brush it over each bite.  Sprinkle the whole shebang with coarse-grained sea salt, and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

I’m told that these bites will freeze for up to three months and that they can be re-thawed in a 300F degree oven.  To be completely honest, the batches I make never last long enough to be a problem.

 Happy baking, and stay safe out there!

Irish Brown Bread

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When I lived in Ireland, I discovered something magical.

My whole American life, I thought that soda bread was some gross concoction of white bread and raisins. I was raised to the unfortunate conclusion that it was yucky and full of “fruit”; only suitable as a doorstop or a second-rate substitution for fruitcake as a holiday gift to relatives you didn’t particularly care for but felt obligated to procure presents for anyway.

But then, I discovered that I was sorely, grossly, wrong. Irish soda bread is a delicious, thick, warm, whole-grain thing. More commonly referred to as “Irish Brown Bread”, it was the staple of every breakfast (…and, for me, lunch, and dinner) when I was abroad. I loved it, and I’m pretty sure that most of my living in Ireland weight was put on due to copious consumption Irish brown bread rather than Guinness.

Upon my return home, I came to several saddening realizations: 1) beer didn’t taste the same anymore; 2) neither did cider; and 3) “soda bread” was still gross, white, and bespeckled with raisins. Where was my hearty brown bread!? What was I going to do but go mad pining for it!?

Almost ten years later, I’ve started baking my own bread and, I realized, if I bake it, I make it. My bread, my rules! There had to be a recipe for Irish brown bread somewhere! TO THE INTERNET!

This was the first recipe to pop up on google (and it was rated five stars by internet denizens at large, a trustworthy bunch en masse even if questionable as individuals). Since the process seemed easy enough, I gave it a whirl. I am SO happy with the results; eating that bread has me right back in Dublin. It’s definitely going to be a staple in this house!

Check out THAT scoring! My happy loaf before it was sliced.

Check out THAT scoring! My happy loaf before it was sliced.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon fine salt
2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
4 tablespoons unsalted butter (1/2 stick), melted.

Methods

First things first: butter type matters! Irish butter, apparently, has a higher fat content than your run-of-the-mill American butter. Most grocery stores will stock KerryGold at least (and, in fact, that’s what I wound up using). I haven’t tried the recipe with “normal” butter, but I’m told that the results won’t be nearly as spectacular. Long story short: get yourself some Irish butter for this baby!

Pre-heat your oven to 400°F and stick the rack in the middle. This ensures proper heat distribution and allows your bread to bake evenly on all sides.

Sprinkle a baking sheet with flour. You could also line it in a sil-pat mat first to ease clean up. I tend to lay down parchment paper and then flour just to keep myself from having to scrub pans when I’m done baking.

Mix your dry ingredients (flours and baking soda). Use a whisk to combine them in a large bowl. If you’re hard-core, you can sift them together. I don’t have a flour sifter because I (generally) don’t believe in single-use kitchen implements, so I just took a whisk and gave it a good stir around until the mixture was free of lumps and one uniform color.

Add the buttermilk and melted butter.   You want to add the buttermilk slowly to ensure that you wind up with the correct texture. I added the first cup along with the butter, mixed everything around a bit with my hands, then slowly added the second cup (I wound up using more like 1.6 cups than 2 cups of buttermilk). You want the dough to be moistened and hold together, but not completely saturated. It might take a bit of mixing around to do. The original recipe recommends mixing at this step with your hands and, truthfully, anything that saves more dishes is fine with me so I went whole-hog bare-handed bread-kneading on this one! Mix everything around until it’s an even consistency (it’ll take about one minute).

Once you’ve done this, turn the dough out (a fancy way of saying “tip it from the bowl”) onto a lightly floured clean work surface. To be completely honest, I tend to use my baking sheet since it’s already floured and I don’t always trust my counter-tops to be clean enough for this task. Knead the dough until you’re left with a smooth ball that has no little pockets of flour. This will take about a minute or so. You want to then create a 2-inch thick flat round about 7 inches in diameter. This bread is dense and thick, so trust me, that’s all you’ll want in a slice. Also: since there’s no yeast in the mixture, the bread will essentially bake in the shape you create now. Make it a good one!

Place your dough mound on your baking sheet if it’s not there already and use a sharp knife to slice an “X” shape on the top. You’ll want this “X” to be about ½ inch deep. This step is called “scoring” the bread and it’s basically a way to help the baker control the final bread shape. As bread cooks, it expands a bit (even non-yeasty bread like this). Think of the shape of a traditional sandwich bread; flat and boxy with the mushroom top. This is due to the “oven spring” process of baking (without getting into the science, basically bread goes “poof” in the oven and expands to up to three times its size pre-baking). As the bread expands, a good score can help you shape the way it does so. The traditional “X” pattern will leave you with a nice round loaf even after it has “sprung” in the oven.

Bake the bread for 35-40 minutes (mine took 35). It’s done when the internal temperature reaches 190°F to 200°F on an instant-read thermometer. Another method to test doneness (the one I used) is to tap on the bread. If it sounds hollow, then it’s done!

Pull the bread from the oven and allow to cool. If you try to slice under-cooked bread, it will fall apart on you. Cooling takes about 2 hours, but I tend to leave mine overnight just to be sure.

Happy baking!

Gimme S’More!

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In keeping with my theme of stress baking, I made S’mores cookies this week!

As I mentioned, I started baking this semester because I wanted to learn how, but also because some things are just so much awesomer home-made. I’ve been using cookies as a morsel-of-sweet staple to get to know baking techniques, and at this point I have a pretty solid understanding of what goes into crafting a well-made cookie. Here is the recipe I used as the basis for my S’mores cookies.

I actually get a lot of my sweet tooth recipes from Averie Cooks. She knows how to make a good cookie, that’s for sure! I made a half batch of these cookies because I was trying to keep the amount of diet-breaking things in the pantry to a low. Despite the fact that Averie claims her recipe yields 26 cookies, my half-batch made 20! So either she makes HUGE confections, or mine are a bit on the small side for a standard cookie. Either way, the recipe below is how I made them…

INGREDIENTS

3/8 cup (3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/8 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/8 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I actually used vanilla bean paste because I find that it packs more flavor than the extract)
7/8 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt, optional and to taste
1/2 cup coarsely chopped graham crackers (I used fat free honey flavored graham crackers)
1 cup (half of a bag) semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used the mini chips)
5/8 cups miniature marshmallows

DIRECTIONS:

  • Averie calls for a stand mixer to cream the butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla with, but I don’t have this piece of equipment in my kitchen. Instead, I use an immersion blender on high. I took the first five ingredients of this recipe, mixed them together in a tall measuring cup (actually the one which came with my immersion blender), and blended for about five minutes until the mixture became light and fluffy. I would highly recommend a stand mixer if you have one; my immersion blender requires you to hold the button down for the blender to work (which is actually really annoying for periods longer than a minute or two).
  • I moved my creamed ingredients from their tall measure into a mixing bowl at this point, scraping down the sides of the measure as I went. To them, I added the next four ingredients (flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and pinch of salt), and used a rubber spatula to fold them together until everything was combined.
  • I crumbled the graham crackers by chopping them with my kitchen knife. Because more problems should have “kitchen knife” as a viable solution. I then folded them into the mixture along with the mini chocolate chips and marshmallows until everything looked pretty evenly combined.
  • I have a cookie scoop (it’s a medium scoop) and I love it. I know that my ever-patient boyfriend was strongly adverse to my bringing this single-use kitchen implement into our already-packed kitchen, but trust me; this little baby has more than made up for the space it takes. If you don’t have a cookie scoop, use the old spoon and scrape method to make 2-inch balls of dough. Place dough balls on a plate (I set down parchment paper sprayed with nonstick spray for easy transfer later and covered with plastic wrap to ensure they didn’t get tough in the fridge). You’ll want to refrigerate them for at least two hours if not overnight before baking. Warm dough will spread in the oven while chilled dough gives you fluffy, thick cookies. DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP; trust me. I’m going to be a Doctor.
  • Preheat your oven to 350F. You’ll want to destickify your cookie sheet with spray, a silpat mat, or parchment paper (I tend to double-dip and use parchment sprayed with non-stick). Transfer chilled dough mounds to your baking sheet giving the cookies plenty of space to expand. Averie says you want at least 2 inches per cookie (I bake a bit closer together, but then again… I like to live dangerously). You want to bake the cookies until the tops are just golden brown (it took mine 8 minutes; though I checked them at 7 just in case). The cookies will firm as they cool, so keep that in mind when you’re checking on them. Because of this, you’ll want to you’re your cookies rest on their baking sheets for a bit before transferring them to a cooling rack to finish the cooling process (five minutes or so should do the trick).

I’m told that cookies will last at room temperature for up to one week if stored in an airtight container. Honestly, mine never last that long. You can also freeze them for “up to 3 months”, but I’ve not yet tested this theory.

Hope you’re having a nice week!

Bread

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One of the things I have learned from being a Graduate Student with an over-burdened schedule is that I am constant devising new coping tactics.  Extreme stress will wear a body down to the point of collapse, and as a warrior on the front lines of enlightenment you are constantly needing to find ways to fight this.

My new method of stress-busting is baking.

It started as a whim.  I’m a pretty amazing cook, but baking was an art which had always eluded me and scared me just a little.  I didn’t know enough about the chemistry of it, I didn’t understand what I could and could not do to a recipe in order to change it.  But a couple season of America’s Next Great Baker and some extreme dissertation stress later, I decided that it was high time I dipped my toes into the wide world of baking.  After several experiments with cookies, scones, and muffins, I decided to try my hand at bread for the first time this week.

Here is the recipe that I used and here is what I learned making it:

No Kneed Beer Bread

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com (which, if you vet the reviews carefully, is a pretty solid source for such things).

Ingredients 

1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 cup warm water (100 degrees F or 38 degrees C)
1 (12 fluid ounce) can or bottle beer
1 1/2 teaspoons fine salt
all-purpose flour for dusting
1 tablespoon cornmeal

You start out with 1.5 tsp (or one packet) of active dry yeast.  Yeast, as it turns out, comes in two varieties: active dry, and instant yeast.  Instant yeast can be used directly in your bread recipe, active dry needs to be “proofed” or woken up first.  For my experiment, I used active dry (which is, by the way, what the recipe calls for).

So yeast is actually an organism that feeds on the sugars in your bread dough and lets it rise (there’s a really good tutorial on working with yeast here).  In order to wake up the yeast, dissolve the amount you need (for this recipe 1.5 tsp) into ½ cup warm water (for this recipe).  When I say “warm”, I mean between 95 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit (about room temperature or slightly above).  You can use a pinch of sugar in there as well to give the yeast some food.  Cover with a towel and let sit in a nice warm place for 6-8 minutes.  When you come back, the mixture should be bubbling; this is the CO2 that the yeast produces as a byproduct and it means the yeast is successfully woken.  Or, in the words of bad Mary Shelley impersonators, “IT’S ALIVE!”

Once you do this, add half a cup of flour to yeast mixture.  Stir together, cover again, and let sit in a warm dark place for half an hour.  Yeast likes dark and warmth to do its best work; if it gets too cold or too bright, the dough won’t rise properly and you’ll be left with a big hunk of flat, solid bread.

Next add the beer.  You want one 12-oz can/bottle (I used Blue Moon pumpkin because… well.. obviously).  Stir it into the mix, and add four cups of flour and 1.5 tsp salt.  This will form a thick dough that will stick to the sides of the bowl.  Cover it again, and allow it to rise for 2 hours.  It should double in size at that time.  Again, make certain your kitchen is nice and warm so that little diva yeast can do its business.

On a well-floured surface (that means a good sprinkling, not cakes and cakes of flour), pour out your dough blob.  Scrape down sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula in order to get the most dough possible into your blog.  Flour your hands a bit and form the mound into loaf-shape, then place it on a baking sheet covered in a thin dusting of cornmeal.  Sprinkle the entire darn thing with more flour, cover, and let rise for 30-40 minutes.  Again with the dark, again with the warm.

You want to preheat your oven to 425 and place on the bottom rack a shallow oven-proof dish filled with water (I used a small pyrex).  This will humidify the oven and ensure that your bread comes out nice and crusty.

Slit the loaf down the middle with a knife or razor to create a pretty line in the dough.  Bake in the oven on a rack above the water for 35 minutes.  You will know the bread is done when the crust turns golden brown.

Remove from oven and cool on cooling rack.  Allow to cool fully before slicing open.

And TA DAH!  Bread!  All the yum, none of the fuss; so tasty, so fresh, and so much less stress than I though it would be.

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