Uncategorized | one cake two cake

chocolate almond thumbprint cookies

April 3, 2010 § 1 Comment

I have to confess that after we were robbed last week, one of my first thoughts was ‘Did they take the food processor?” And then I ran into the kitchen to check.

Luckily, the burglars were not tempted by my large, clumsy, multi-bladed kitchen equipment (although apparently our laptops were more enticing). I celebrated by using it immediately! Which in my world means several days later. Sliced almonds were toasted until golden and aromatic, and then blitzed with flour and sugar. The resulting cookie dough was stuffed with dark chocolate chips and then baked until adorable.

I’m not usually a huge fan of almond desserts, but it works beautifully in these cookies and I think it’s largely because they’re freshly toasted and it’s not too sweet. The cookies are chewy and flavourful, and they’re cute enough to make a good gift. Mine were a little, um, authentic looking, as I am no Martha Stewart, but the originals, baked at Smitten Kitchen, are prettier partly because she uses large baking discs. I couldn’t really justify buying yet another kind of chocolate, so made it with chocolate chips. I tried a few different kinds and would recommend either bittersweet or semisweet chips, because the milk chocolate ones obstinately refused to melt and just kind of looked weird. You could also top them with mini chocolate eggs, just in time for Easter!

Chocolate Almond Thumbprint Cookies – adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Yield: 2 dozen cookies

3/4 cup sliced almonds, toasted and cooled
2/3 cup sugar
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Chocolate chips (I recommend bittersweet or semisweet)

Pulse hazelnuts, sugar, flour, and salt in a food processor until finely ground. (Be careful not to grind to a paste.) Transfer to a bowl and stir in butter, egg, and extract until combined well. Chill dough, covered, until firm, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Drop level tablespoons of dough 1 inch apart onto baking sheets. Roll dough into balls, then chill until slightly firm, about 10 minutes.

Press 2 or 3 chocolate chips firmly into the top of each ball of cookie dough and bake, 1 sheet at a time, until tops are pale golden and undersides are golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Be careful not to overbake. Transfer cookies to a rack and cool completely.

burglarized

March 27, 2010 § 4 Comments

So last week our house was robbed. And robbed very mysteriously – we still haven’t figured out how they got in. That makes me extra nervous, since we can’t fix the problem to make sure it doesn’t happen again. On the other hand, we no longer own anything valuable so I guess future robberies wouldn’t be so bad.

This left us all a little nervous though, as it’s a bit of a shock to realize how easy it is for someone to invade your private space. Almost all of us, that is – one of my roommates is from South Africa and has been burglarized (it’s a word!) a dozen times or so already. He’s mildly amused at our alarm, and thinks we were tempting fate just by not having bars on the windows. I suppose he may have a point.

I reacted mainly by whipping up a batch of my favourite comfort food: chocolate chip cookie dough. I actually baked most of it into cookies! The internet has about a bazillion and one chocolate chip cookie recipes on it already, and this one isn’t particularly distinctive in any way, so I don’t think it’s really worth sharing. The cake I made, though, may be my favourite coffee cake in the world. I’ve been waiting almost a year for rhubarb to come back into season so that I could bake it, and when I finally saw gorgeous pink stalks at the grocery store, I leaped! Like the rhubarb-eating ninja that I am.

This cake is moist and tender, and wonderfully tart from the rhubarb. Also, it’s bedecked with a generous helping of crumb topping. It’s also an effective antidote to burglar-nervousness, should you ever need that, but I’m hoping that you won’t. Lock your doors!

Rhubarb Crumb Coffee Cake – adapted from Smitten Kitchen

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Filling:

1/2 pound rhubarb, trimmed
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Crumbs:

1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) butter, melted
1 1/4 cups flour (you may need slightly more or less to get a stiff dough)

Cake:

1/3 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons softened butter, cut into 8 pieces.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round or an 8-inch square baking pan.

For filling, slice rhubarb 1/2 inch thick and toss with sugar, cornstarch and ginger. Set aside.

To make crumbs, in a large bowl, whisk sugars, spices and salt into melted butter until smooth. Then, add flour with a spatula or wooden spoon. It will look and feel like a solid dough. Leave it pressed together in the bottom of the bowl and set aside.

To prepare cake, in a small bowl, stir together the sour cream, egg, egg yolk and vanilla. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment (I just used the beaters on my hand mixer), mix together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add butter and a spoonful of sour cream mixture and mix on medium speed until flour is moistened. Increase speed and beat for 30 seconds. Add remaining sour cream mixture in two batches, beating for 20 seconds after each addition, and scraping down the sides of bowl with a spatula. Scoop out about 1/2 cup batter and set aside.

Scrape remaining batter into prepared pan. Spoon rhubarb over batter. Dollop set-aside batter over rhubarb; it does not have to be even.

Using your fingers, break topping mixture into big crumbs, about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch in size. They do not have to be uniform, but make sure most are around that size. Sprinkle over cake. Bake cake until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean of batter (it might be moist from rhubarb), 45 to 55 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

black-bottom cupcakes

March 10, 2010 § 3 Comments

My roommates and I finally decided to man up and clean out the fridge. It has gone from overflowing with unidentified substances, to neatly organized and mildly OCD. We actually have our own shelves now! My roommates’ shelves have sensible items like produce and condiments, whereas mine is pretty much restricted to things containing the word ‘cream’ (heavy cream, sour cream, cream cheese….). My shelf clearly wins.

Having cream cheese on hand is especially important if you like to whip up birthday treats for people at the last second. Although deliciousness is always my main priority, portability is also an issue. These cupcakes are perfect: a moist, chocolatey cupcake is stuffed with a rich cream cheese filling, studded with dark chocolate chunks. No frosting needed! They can be stacked, toppled, and they still arrive in pretty decent shape. Also, they’re very very yummy, and always well received. An extra cupcake went to my roommate, who reported: “The texture is perfectly fluffy and omg there are chocolate-y bits in there! However, one major issue with this cupcake is that there’s only one of it here, or was.” Luckily the recipe makes twelve, so you can avoid this problem for approximately one day.

Black-Bottom Cupcakes – from The Great Book of Chocolate

Yield: 12 cupcakes

Filling:

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used bittersweet chips)

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 tablespoons natural unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup unflavored vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the filling: Beat together the cream cheese, granulated sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in the chopped chocolate pieces. Set aside.

Make the cupcakes:

Preheat to 350°F. Butter a 12-cup muffin tin, or line the tin with paper muffin cups.

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together the water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients, stirring until just smooth. Stir any longer and you will over mix the batter and end up with less-than-tender cupcakes.

Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Spoon a few tablespoons of the filling into the center of each cupcake, dividing the filling evenly. This will fill the cups almost completely, which is fine. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown and the cupcakes feel springy when gently pressed. These moist treats will keep well unrefrigerated for 2 to 3 days if stored in an airtight container.

lemon poppy-seed cake

February 27, 2010 § 9 Comments

I get oddly nervous about baking sometimes. When something doesn’t behave precisely as I would expect from the instructions in the recipe, I become staunchly convinced that I’ve ruined everything and am eternally doomed to failure, whereas my roommates roll their eyes, having seen this madness before. This cake is a case in point: the instructions said to beat egg yolks until very fluffy. What does fluffy mean? Can egg yolks really be fluffy? I’m not sure, but beat them for a full 20 minutes to find out. Nothing much happened and now my arms hurt.

I forgive the cake though, as it turns out that non-fluffy eggs still produce a very yummy result. This cake is very civilized. It made me want to nibble it while drinking tea, preferably from nice china. I found the lemon flavour to be fairly subdued, each bite crackles with poppy seeds, and it has the rich, soft texture that comes from 8 egg yolks and a cup of butter. All in all, it’s light and subtle – not a decadent dessert, but rather a very satisfying snack cake that you might accidentally eat for breakfast.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake – from Smitten Kitchen

2/3 cup sugar
8 large egg yolks
1 large whole egg
1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (from 2 lemons)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
Pinch of salt
2 sticks (1/2 pound) unsalted butter, melted and cooled a bit
1/2 cup poppy seeds (I got this from one 3-ounce spice bottle)

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and flour an 8-inch fluted Bundt or tube pan generously. (I used a 10-inch, and thought my tiny cake was adorable.) Butter the dull side of a 10-inch piece of foil.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk, beat the sugar with the egg yolks and whole egg at medium-high speed until the mixture is pale yellow and very fluffy (or not), about 8 minutes. Beat in the lemon zest. Sift the flour and cornstarch over the egg mixture and fold in along with the pinch of salt with a rubber spatula. At medium speed, beat in the butter, then beat in the poppy seeds.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and cover tightly with the buttered foil. Bake for 45 minutes (35 minutes in 10-inch pan), or until the cake pulls away from the side of the pan and a cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove the foil and let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto the rack and let cool completely before serving, at least 30 minutes.

recovering tomato sauce

February 21, 2010 § Leave a comment

I’ve failed as a food blogger! Apparently I have a real job that takes some time occasionally. And recently, it’s been all my time, and homemade food became a rarity. I started eating takeout or sandwiches for dinner, and not the tasty, interesting kind of sandwiches. The peanut butter kind. The closest I came to baking was making a half batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, sticking it in the fridge, and eating it raw over the next several days. Yes, I did that.

But I’ve made it through the storm now and was drawn back to the kitchen by the lure of one of the most recent recipes to make the rounds on every food blog ever. Everyone raves about this tomato sauce, and it has only THREE INGREDIENTS. Even I can do that! Although it did take me about a week to get around to it. I’ve been a little unimpressive lately. But once I did, I was really intrigued by the results. It’s so simple, but the tomato sauce is rich and velvety, and the butter makes it much gentler than the typical olive oil sauce. It’s really, really good.

So here it is: the perfect dinner for when you’re crunched for time. It’s practically effortless, but it does need to simmer for 45 minutes so it’s still not totally ideal if you, like me, tend to come home at night wanting to eat that very second. But if you have some work to catch up on as it simmers and want a hassle-free meal, it’s perfect. Also, you will feel significantly less gross than you would after eating raw cookie dough for dinner – major bonus.

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onion – from Marcella Hazan

Serves 4 (um, if you’re me, serves 2)

28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (preferably San Marzano)
5 tablespoons (70 grams) butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (I used salted butter and didn’t need to add any), and serve over pasta.