Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Chocolate and More Chocolate

So these are repeats, but sometimes I cycle through recipes in rapid succession when I have different baking audiences. These were for my hairstylist, Tom's office, and our real estate agents.




Recipes:

• Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies from epicurious.com.
• Chocolate Almond Souffle Torte from epicurious.com.
  

A Prize-Winning Peanut Butter Pretzel Treat

Three years ago I entered a chocolate chip cookie contest sponsored by the National Capital Area YWCA to commemorate the organization's 100th birthday. Apparently, back in the day, the YWCA had an on-site bakery and sold thousands of chocolate chip cookies a day. To honor this tradition, the YWCA invited women to submit original chocolate chip cookie recipes; the winning cookie recipe would be produced on a large scale and sold to the public to raise funds for the YWCA. You can read an article about the bakeoff here.

My recipe was selected as one of the top ten entries and I was invited to compete in a bakeoff held at Stratford University. At the bakeoff, I was pleasantly surprised when I met another contestant named Sarah Croake who happened to be a paralegal at the same federal agency where I work. When I tasted her cookie, I was smitten. It was a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie that also included broken pretzel pieces. The salty-nutty-sweet combination was immensely satisfying. The peanut butter-chocolate-pretzel theme has been popularized in Ben & Jerry's Chubby Hubby (fudge-covered, peanut butter-filled pretzel nuggets in a vanilla malt ice cream base with peanut butter and fudge swirls) and the Hershey Take 5 bar (milk chocolate, caramel, peanuts, peanut butter, and pretzels), but I had never seen it in a cookie before.

Sarah's Peanut Butter and Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookie took third place in the bakeoff, and she was kind enough to share the recipe with me afterwards. Whenever I make this cookie, it's always a bit comical to try and mix in all of the chocolate chips and pretzel bits at the end, because there is barely enough peanut butter batter to hold everything together. But the result is always beautiful and delicious.

As for my bakeoff recipe, the Cherry Almond Chocolate Chip Cookie, it didn't place. But I really can't complain. I am happy to give credit where credit is due, and my cookie can't hold a candle to this salty-sweet treat.

South America Food Report

I just returned from a week-long business trip to Bogotá and Lima. A few of the food highlights:

Bogotá is almost 9000 ft. above sea level and I think the altitude was the reason for the dull headache I had the entire time I was there. I stayed at the 101 Park House Suites, a nicely appointed hotel with a very attentive staff (although this might have been in part because I accidentally tipped the bellman the unreasonably large sum of US$10 shortly after I arrived). Breakfast was included in the room rate, and I enjoyed the soothing and satisfying potato and beef soup that was served every morning (along with other more traditional breakfast fare). The texture reminded me a bit of the Chinese radish soup that my mom makes, but in any case, it was quite comforting as I tried to get myself together to face each day.

On my first day in Bogotá one of our hosts took us to the Santa Ana shopping center, a mall that could have easily passed for one in the U.S., if not for the bomb-sniffing dogs at all of the garage entrances and the security guards wanding visitors who came in from street level. We ate at the restaurant Crepes & Waffles, a Bogotá-based chain that serves exactly what the name promises. The restaurant waitstaff is comprised of single mothers. My turkey crepe was quite tasty (even though I ordered it by mistake because my Spanish is a bit rusty; in Spanish, turkey is "pavo" and duck is "pato"). I had a sweet crepe with nutella and strawberries for dessert, while my colleagues indulged in frozen creations from the remarkably extensive, separately spiral bound ice cream dessert menu, including the temptation sundae pictured here.

The next day another host took us to the Santafé shopping center, where we ate lunch at the Pan-Asian restaurant Wok. I enjoyed a cold mushroom and tofu salad with a strawberry-lychee juice. I discovered several delicious fruit juices while I was in Colombia, including lulo juice, which was served during all of the breaks at the seminar I was attending. I have still never tasted or even seen a whole lulo, but the light greenish-yellow juice was crisply tart and extremely refreshing. Noting our interest in exotic fruits, our host took us on a trip to Surtifruver de la Sabana, an enormous fruit market. The name "Surtifruver" is a combination of the Spanish words "surtir" (a verb meaning to supply), "frutas" (fruits), and "verduras" (vegetables). Bogotá is located on a high plateau in the Andes mountains, referred to as a savannah ("sabana" in Spanish). I have never seen so many different varieties of produce in one place, not to mention so many fruits that I simply had never seen before. One of the few exotics I did recognize was the cherimoya (or custard apple), a fruit that my parents often buy in Los Angeles. I didn't realize that it was native to South America. It hails from Peru and I saw it commonly offered in desserts there.

The culinary highlight of Bogotá was a dinner at Astrid y Gaston, a top Peruvian restaurant run by chef Gaston Acurio (who happens to be married to a woman named Astrid). A group of about 35 seminar attendees dined in a gorgeous private room on the top floor of the restaurant where wine was stored from floor to ceiling. The first course was a green salad served with an arepa topped with broiled goat cheese and a fried yuca chip. The main course was a tender and very rich lamb shank served with onions, fava beans, mushrooms, and what I'm pretty sure were gooseberries (I have never actually seen or eaten a gooseberry before, but they fit the description). Dessert was ice cream covered with a berry coating, served with a tapioca sauce. The service was outstanding, the conversation was lively, and the dinner was delicious!

I don't have much to report on the food in Lima. I can report that everyone in Lima does really does drink Inca Kola, as well as Chicha Morada, a sweetened drink made of boiled purple maize. My colleague Jan and I went to a dim sum restaurant in Lima's Chinatown where I was unable to comprehend the Spanish descriptions of Chinese food on the menu (the menu was bilingual Spanish-Chinese, but I don't read Chinese) or have a productive conversation with the waitress to try and order what I wanted. Instead, I spent a lot of time coveting the deliciously appealing steam baskets of buns and dumplings that everyone else around us had managed to order.

Next time I head to Lima, I will do my homework first. There are tons of Chinese restaurants (or "chifas") in Peru and some of them are supposed to be quite good. Fittingly, I read Jennifer 8. Lee's book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles while I was away, and she considered Lima's Restaurant Royale in the running for the title of "The Greatest Chinese Restaurant in the World."

Key Lime Sugar Cookies

I recently bought a bag of key limes at the grocery store on impulse, completely forgetting that I am about to head out of the country for a week. Last night I realized that I had better use the limes for something before I leave town. I decided to try a recipe for Key Lime Sugar Cookies from Nancy's Baggett's The All-American Dessert Book.

The first step in the recipe is to combine 4 teaspoons grated key lime zest with 4 teaspoons corn oil and let the mixture sit for at least 30 minutes. I am grateful that I had a persian lime on hand as well as my bag of key limes. Key limes are very small and very thin-skinned. I cannot imagine how many you would have to zest to yield 4 teaspoons. The lime-oil mixture is mixed into the cookie dough, along with 2 and a half tablespoons of concentrated key lime juice (reduced over heat from 6 tablespoons). The dough is rolled out between sheets of parchment and chilled before cutting and baking. After they cookies are cooled, they are decorated with an icing made of powdered sugar and lime juice (and, some food coloring).

I rolled out the cookies quite thin, and they were crisp right out of the oven, but softened a little after cooling. The lime flavor is very strong, but the cookies have a bit of a bitter aftertaste and the frosting is sort of blah. I'm not sure, but I think I may have accidentally caught a bit of the bitter pith (the spongy white layer under the colored peel) in the key lime zest. While the cookies are fun to look at, they were much too much effort, and not nearly tasty enough, to justify making again.

I'll be taking a little break from baking while I'm in South America on a business trip, but I hope to blog a bit about my trip when I come back. See you when I get back!

Recipe: "Key Lime Sugar Cookies" from Nancy Baggett's All-American Dessert Book.

A Mid-Week Baking Binge

Last night I went on a bit of a baking binge. I wanted to bake enough to bring my co-workers their weekly fix, as well as putting together some extra goodies to give out as thank yous for some folks in other offices who have been helping me out with a project at work. I whipped up the dough for some Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies, and while that batter chilled, I baked a batch of Chewy Cherry Almond Bars (pictured above) and made batter for some Gingersnaps. My standard Gingersnaps recipe comes from Sunday Best Baking: Over a Century of Secrets from the White Lily Kitchen, a cookbook of recipes for White Lily Flour. The recipe is a straightforward mixture of brown sugar, butter, molasses, egg, flour, baking soda, and spices (cinnamon, ginger and cloves). You chill the dough, form the cookies, and flatten them with a glass dipped in sugar before baking. The result is a soft, chewy, perfectly round cookie.


My giant chocolate-toffee cookies also came out beautifully, deeply crackled and extra-chewy. I was up pretty late baking, but at least I got to catch some live late-night Olympic coverage! I boxed and bagged up my baked goods before going to bed with a smile on my face... Few things are as satisfying as a successful night of baking that produces a big batch of baked goods to give away!

Recipes:

• "Chewy Cherry Almond Bars" from Cookies and Brownies by Alice Medrich.
• "Gingersnaps" from Sunday Best Baking: Over a Century of Secrets from the White Lily Kitchen.
• Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies from epicurious.com.
  

The Third Time's the Charm, Sort Of

I have been chasing the dream of no-knead bread for almost two years. Yeasted breads have always been my achilles heel. The idea of my being able to make artisanal loaves at home was nothing short of delusional.

Then almost two years ago, Mark Bittman published an article in his New York Times Minimalist column on "No-Knead Bread," describing a method of making bread using a very small amount of yeast (only one-quarter teaspoon), a long rising time (24 hours), and no kneading whatsoever. Bittman declared it easy enough that a child could do it.

The recipe published with Bittman's article was absurd in its simplicity, and I put it on my backburner list of recipes to try at some unspecified time in the future. Then my friend Patsy invited me over to dinner and I saw and tasted a loaf that she had baked using the Bittman recipe. It was unbelievable. Perfectly round and high with a golden chewy crust and a wonderful crumb like you might purchase from your favorite bakery. That weekend I tried Bittman's recipe. I ended up with a puddle of dough that baked up into a flat, ugly, undercooked, yeasty mess. I was sufficiently dejected to abandon the effort to make no-knead bread for over a year.

Last month at the Dinner for David, Patsy served two loaves of "Almost No-Knead Bread" that she made using a recipe from the January/February issue of Cook's Illustrated. I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but I liked it even more than her version of the Bittman bread. The Cook's Illustrated recipe includes vinegar and beer, and I thought the deep flavor and dense crumb of the bread were outstanding. So, inspired once again, I asked Patsy for a copy of the recipe. I tried it, and again ended up with a runny puddle of dough. This time I didn't even bother baking it.

I just resigned myself to the fact that clearly I can't make no-knead bread, even though everyone else on the planet seems to be able to make it with no problem... My blogging partner CluckyDucky posted about her experiences with no-knead bread a couple of weeks ago, and several friends have asked me with a combination of pity and bewilderment what I could possibly be doing wrong since they can all bake no-knead bread effortlessly on a regular basis.

Then last week I opened up the new King Arthur Flour catalog that I received in the mail, and right inside the front cover, there was a recipe for "No-Knead Harvest Bread." This recipe included raisins, walnuts, and dried cranberries. I thought hey, I'm a glutton for punishment... why not give it a try? So last night I mixed up the dough and let it rise overnight. This morning was a little like Christmas; I bounded out of bed eagerly awaiting to see what baking Santa had left me. I was overjoyed to see that it was something that looked like it might actually bake into a loaf of bread, and not just a runny puddle of flour.


The King Arthur Flour recipe differs significantly from the Bittman and Cook's Illustrated recipes when it comes to the baking instructions. Bittman and Cook's Illustrated instruct you to bake the bread in a enameled cast iron dutch oven that has been preheated in the oven. The King Arthur Flour recipe instructs you to bake the bread in a baking cloche, which starts out in a cold oven. I don't have a cloche, so I used a Le Creuset dutch oven. As directed, I put the bread in the dutch oven into a cold oven, and then turned on the oven to 450 degrees. After 45 minutes, I took off the lid, and I was happy to see a bunch of steam escape. I was a little less happy to see that the bread had not risen very much and the loaf was fairly flat. I let the bread bake for another 5 minutes uncovered and took the temperature of the loaf with an instant read thermometer. It was only 185 degrees, and the recipe said it should be 205. I gave it another 10 minutes, at which point the thermometer read 208 degrees. At that point, the loaf was very brown (see picture at the beginning of this post) and I was pretty sure it was ruined, but I thought I would let it cool and see what it looked like inside.

A few hours later, I sawed into the loaf and gingerly took a bite. To my tremendous relief, it was tasty and moist! And the crust, although chewy, was quite fine and didn't taste burnt at all. Certainly I don't think this loaf was perfect by any means, but it was perfectly edible, and in light of my colossal past failures, I'm happy to start out with some baby steps! So I'm going to chalk this one up in the win column. I think the bread will be especially good toasted, and topped with the brie I bought earlier today. And it's certainly enough to renew my spirit and enthusiasm for no-knead bread, which I was about ready to abandon forever.

Recipes:

• "No-Knead Bread" from the New York Times
• "Almost No-Knead Bread" from Cook's Illustrated
• "No-Knead Harvest Bread" from King Arthur Flour
  

Hospital Corners Make For Better Baking

Yesterday, no fewer than three people -- in completely unrelated conversations -- asked me if I bake with parchment. Apparently this question was prompted by some of the pictures on this blog, which show something resembling tan paper on my baking sheets. I do bake with parchment, almost all the time, for several reasons. First, it prevents anything from sticking to the pan and makes unmolding my finished products a breeze. Few things are more frustrating than having a sheet cake or pan of brownies stick and refuse to come out of the pan (or worse, to unmold the top half of a cake only to have the bottom half remain behind!). Second, it prevents burning. I generally use dark pans that absorb a lot more heat than shiny aluminum finish pans; parchment paper will prevent excessive browning where a cake or cookie would otherwise directly touch the pan. Third, it makes clean up much easier. When I pull a batch of cookies out of the oven, I let them cool and firm up a bit on the pan, move the cookies to a rack to cook completely, and then wipe off the parchment and reuse it for the next round of cookies to go into the oven (but yes, the paper does get thrown away at the end of the night when the baking is finished!). It definitely beats having to wash the pans between every batch.

I line cookie sheets, square and rectangular pans, and springform pans (I trace the bottom and cut out a circle) with parchment. Basically, anything except a Bundt pan. I use unbleached parchment paper that comes on a roll, which I buy in bulk at amazon.com (I don't have anything against bleached paper; it's just more cost effective for me to get the unbleached variety). It's very easy to fold and cut a piece of parchment paper to perfectly fit into a straight-sided square or rectangular cake pan, by following the steps illustrated in my amateur diagram below. Essentially you just have to fold modified hospital corners.

1. Cut a piece of parchment large enough to cover the bottom of the pan with an extra 2-inch overhang on all sides
2. Fold in the edges of the paper such that the paper will exactly fit into the bottom of the pan
3. Make four cuts as illustrated by the red dotted lines above
4. Fold over the corners 90 degrees to make a little hospital corners and the result should fit perfectly into the pan

As I did the process last night, steps 2 through 4 looked like this:

Last night I baked a One-in-a-Hundred Fudge Cake for another office party today (another week, another party!). Because I lined my pan with parchment, I skipped the steps of buttering and flouring the pan as directed in the recipe, which is from the the August 30, 2000, Food Section of the Los Angeles Times. This wonderfully easy cake includes 2 cups of sour cream, is mixed in a single bowl, and is somehow simultaneously dark, chocolately, moist and light. It is my favorite standard chocolate cake recipe.

The LA Times published a chocolate frosting recipe to go along with the cake, but I have never been a fan. Usually I frost this cake with a vanilla buttercream, but this time I decided to try something different and made a Chocolate-Raspberry Frosting. I didn't have raspberry brandy and used cherry brandy instead. The frosting stayed fluffy and never set, even after spending the night in the fridge. Being the teetotaler that I am, I didn't care for the brandy flavor and scraped off all of the frosting before I ate my piece at the party. But the cake... Mmmmmm, chocolate cake!


Cake Recipe: "One-in-a-Hundred Fudge Cake" from the Los Angeles Times, August 30, 2000.
Frosting Recipe: Chocolate-Raspberry Frosting from epicurious.com.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bites

Recipe: "Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bites," Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS Column, July 2, 2008.
Earlier Post: A Mysterious Midnight Bite.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Peanut Butter Cookies With Chocolate Chunks

So when I bake something that I've already posted about and I have nothing else to add, I'll just post a picture without any commentary.

Recipe: Peanut Butter Cookies with Chocolate Chunks from epicurious.com.
Earlier Post: A Baking Beauty Secret

Still Stuck on Scones

I'm not working today, and as I often do on my day off, I have plans to meet Tom in Bethesda for lunch. Whenever I meet Tom at his office, I try to bring some baked goods for him to share. Fortunately, he works at a small office, so this doesn't require too much effort. Since Tom raved about the Cheddar Chive Scones I made last weekend -- and because I still had a bunch of chives and a block of aged cheddar left over from that effort -- I decided to bake another batch of savory scones.

I have been asked in the past about how to form scones into the familiar triangle shape, and what do I think about the now widely-available scone pans by Nordic Ware that shape the dough into perfect wedges for you. I think that a special pan for making scones is completely unnecessary, because it is so easy to form beautiful scones by hand. In short, you form the dough into a ball, flatten it into a disk, and then cut the disk into 6 (or if it's large, possibly 8) wedges. Voila! Nice triangle-shaped scones!


There is also something wonderfully elegant about making scones this way. It requires minimum handling of the dough, creates no waste, and results in uniformly-sized scones. Some recipes call for the use of a cookie cutter, which means that you have to reassemble and rework dough scraps, something that can make the dough tougher.

The pale and scrawny looking triangles rise in the oven to beautiful rounded wedges, an appearance I think is more attractive than the straight-sided clones you would get with a scone pan. So maybe they're not all identical. But I think there is something wonderful about the individual beauty of homemade.