Going Nuts for Brownies

On Monday afternoon as I was pondering what I was going to bake for the office this week, I was inspired by the supersize jars of Planters roasted peanuts that Tom and I recently bought on impulse at Target. I thought of a brownie recipe I've made a few times that calls for peanuts, Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies with Salted Peanuts. I haven't made these particular brownies in over a year, so I thought maybe it was about time to revisit the recipe.

This recipe is pretty straightforward, although it is slightly time consuming, since you have to wait for the brownie to cool before you can add the peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache layers, and then you have to wait some more for the ganache to set up in the fridge before you can cut the bars.

The finished bars are beautiful, although I was a little underwhelmed with the taste this time around. I thought that the chocolate flavor of the brownie was a little blah; I seem to remember them being more chocolately and fudgy when I've made the bars in the past. Still, it's a not a bad brownie for fans of chocolate and peanut butter.

Recipe: Peanut Butter and Fudge Brownies with Salted Peanuts from epicurious.com.

Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Snickerdoodles

I asked my secretary if he had a baked goods requests for Administrative Professionals Day last week, and his choice was snickerdoodles.

Recipe: "Snicker Doodles" from Cookie and Brownies by Alice Medrich.
Previous Post: "Snickerdoodle Dandy," April 6, 2009.

McKenna's Baptism

On Sunday, our friends Jim and Colleen celebrated the baptism of their daughter McKenna. When Jim requested some "I can't believe it's not a Hostess!" cupcakes for the lunch following the baptism, I was honored to be able to contribute to the occasion. However, when Jim suggested that I decorate the cupcakes with doves, I was a bit hesitant. I could only imagine the horrors that would result if I tried to draw doves freehand. I cannot draw worth a damn with a pen or pencil, much less a frosting tip and bag.

On the recommendation of my friend Patsy, I visited the cake decorating shop Little Bitts in Wheaton (11246 Triangle Lane, Wheaton, MD, 301-933-2733). I called ahead and the woman who answered the phone assured me that they had plenty of Christian-themed decorations that would fit the bill. When I went to the store in person, it did not disappoint. Little Bitts only sells cake and baking supplies and decorations (frosting colors, sugars and sprinkles in every shape and color, boxes, cake circles, cupcake liners, birthday candles, and the like). It's really quite an amazing place. They have so many varieties of sugar decorations that many of them are not even out on display, but kept in labeled boxes stacked on high shelves that are accessible by the store staff if they pull out a stepladder. I asked to see the boxes labeled, "Doves - large," "Doves - small," and "Christian Assortment."

The assortment included a book, cross, lamb, dove, lily, and fish. The small doves were very tiny and pure white, without much detail. The large doves included the nice details of a painted-on eye and bright pink beak. They were sold in pairs (facing opposite directions) for 60 cents a pair and I thought they would be the perfect size for the cupcakes. I bought my doves and went home to bake.

I usually overfill these cupcakes with cream filling, to the point where it bursts through the top of the cupcake (I just frost it over, so the cupcakes still look nice when they're served). But I wanted to keep the tops of these cupcakes flat, so that the dove would lie flush and it would be easier to write on the cupcakes. I didn't put in very much filling, and I (and other people who have previously eaten these cupcakes) could definitely tell the difference.

Originally, I had envisioned piping out a ribbon reading "McKenna" that the dove would be carrying in its mouth. I quickly abandoned this idea after trying it out; there simply wasn't enough room on the cupcake for the ribbon and I would not be able to write McKenna's name small enough to make it work anyway. I decided to just write McKenna's name underneath the doves instead, using some leftover marshmallow cream filling that I dyed pink. The sugar decorations might have been a shortcut, but I was very pleased with the end result!

Recipe: "Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Filling," from Food & Wine, November 2002.

Previous Post: "A Childhood Treat from a Purloined Page," September 7, 2008.

Engagement Party? I Do!

Over the weekend I put together some baked goods for an engagement party. The hostess requested Chocolate-Chip Mint Cookies, Raspberry-Filled White Chocolate Bars, and Recchiuti Brownies.

The hostess also asked for small serving sizes so that the guests would be able to sample a variety of selections. Normally I cut a 9- by 13-inch pan of bars into 24 2-inch squares. This time around, I cut the Raspberry-Filled White Chocolate Bars into half-size triangles, and the Recchiuti Brownies into 1-inch by 2-inch rectangles, yielding 48 servings from each 9x13 inch pan.


Recipes:

• "Chocolate Chip-Mint Cookies" from Still Life With Menu Cookbook by Mollie Katzen.
  
• "Raspberry-Filled White Chocolate Bars," from the 1990 Pillsbury Bakeoff by contestant Mark Bocianski.sep29
  
• Recchiuti Fudgy Brownies, Los Angeles Times, September 29, 2004.
  

Previous Posts:

• "Baking Recap, Week of June 2," June 5, 2008.
• "Holiday Party Recap, Part II: Bites, Bars, and a Holiday Standard," December 15, 2008.
  

Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Chocolate-Almond Soufflé Torte

I brought this flourless cake into the office last week during Passover:

Recipe: Chocolate-Almond Soufflé Torte from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "Bastille Day Treats," July 14, 2008.

Vegetarian Quiche and Not-So-Vegetarian Panna Cotta

On Easter Sunday, Tom and I had some friends over for dinner. Usually when we entertain, Tom gets stuck doing all of the work for the savory food, since he is nothing short of a genius when it comes to meats and the grill. But with one of our guests being a vegetarian, I thought I would take a stab at making a vegetarian entree.

I've had quiche on my mind since coming across a very yummy looking recipe for quiche lorraine in the Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS column last summer (the recipe is from Le Pain Quotidien and is available online here). I browsed around for vegetarian quiche recipes and found a promising one at epicurious.com, "Madame Quiche's Quiche Au Fromage." Usually I avoid making pies at all costs, since my crust-making skills are pretty poor. However, I found this crust recipe very easy to put together and roll out, and I was positively ecstatic when I managed to put together the crust pictured above.

I made the onion and cheese quiche variation outlined in the recipe, using cave-aged Gruyere. The finished quiche was simultaneously rich and fluffy, deeply flavorful, and just delicious. The crust was crisp and very tasty. I would happily make this again (and again and again) and I wouldn't change a thing (okay, maybe I would add some ham or bacon if it wasn't for a vegetarian, but I was very surprised at how tasty this was without any meat).

For dessert, I decided to try a recipe I recently saw in the New York Times, Cereal-Milk Panna Cotta with Carmelized Corn Flake Crunch. The recipe comes from chef Christina Tosi of Momofuku Ko, whose cooking adventures with breakfast cereals were described in this article. The recipe starts with six cups of Kelloggs Corn Flakes, which are toasted and then steeped in a mixture of cream and whole milk. The mixture is strained and the remaining liquid -- now carrying the flavor of the Corn Flakes -- is used to make the panna cotta.

The panna cotta is topped with a mixture of Corn Flakes, powdered milk, sugar, salt and melted butter, that is toasted in the oven until golden brown. I found the topping to be a little too salty and thought it was better if used sparingly. I didn't think the panna cotta was all that interesting, but Tom seems to be a big fan. I can say that it did have the distinct flavor of toasted cereal. I'm sure the fact that I'm lactose intolerant and have always eaten my cereal completely dry makes me a little of an outlier in that I don't have any particular affinity or nostalgia for the taste of cereal-infused milk.

Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and forgot that the gelatin that is used to set the panna cotta is definitely not vegetarian. But thankfully, I had some overflow from Cindy's birthday party baked goods from the day before, and I was able to offer a nice dessert selection.

Recipes:

• Madame Quiche's Quiche Au Fromage from epicurious.com.
• Pastry for a One-Crust Tart from epicurious.com.
• Cereal-Milk Panna Cotta With Carmelized Corn Flake Crunch from the New York Times, February 17, 2009.
  

Cindy's Birthday Party

My cousin Cindy and her friend Emily hosted a joint birthday party on Saturday night, and Cindy asked me to supply the baked goods. Cindy and I both happen to be lawyers who bake.

Cindy's requests included snickerdoodles, fudgy chocolate-raspberry bars, a Restaurant Eve cake, and red velvet cupcakes. I tried to make what I call "party size" (i.e., smaller) snickerdoodles -- since party guests usually like to nibble and graze on a variety of offerings -- but my #50 cookie scoop broke shortly into the baking process. I had to go with the #40 scoop instead, which yielded 3.5 inch diameter cookies. This batch was even better than the snickerdoodles I made last week, with a wonderfully dense, almost chewy texture.

Cindy requested that I cut the fudgy chocolate-raspberry bars into very small portions, no more than 2 or 3 bites each. Since these bars are very fudgy and extremely dense, it only take a few bites to get your fill anyway. The recipe is written for a 9-inch square pan, but I usually multiply it by 1.5 and bake a 9" x 13" pan instead. I trimmed the edges off of the finished bars to yield a 8" x 12" rectangle that I cut into 48 bars that were 1" x 2" each. I searched high and low for raspberries to garnish the bars, but turned up empty after looking in three different grocery stores, so I left them plain.

For the Restaurant Eve cake, Cindy had the peculiar request of a 2-layer 9" round cake with aqua or blue-green frosting and pink trim. I played around with the frosting color quite a bit, mixing dark blue, light blue, and leaf green to come up with something closely approximating Tiffany blue. The color scheme would not have been my pick, but it was meant to match the decor of the room where the party was held. Cindy topped the cake with two-tone pink candles and served it on bright pink plates, which really helped pull together the overall look.

Finally, while Cindy received pretty standard red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (pictured at the top of this post), I held back a few cupcakes for Tom and our house guests: Tom's best friend from college and his wife and son, who were visiting us from California. I asked 5-year old Thomas to decorate some cupcakes for us, and I brought out all of the sprinkles and colored sugars that I had on hand. Thomas used them all to make the original creations pictured below:

Recipes:

• "Snicker Doodles" from Cookies and Brownies by Alice Medrich.
• Fudgy Chocolate-Raspberry Bars from epicurious.com.
  
• Retaurant Eve's Cake from the Washington Post, April 23, 2006.
• Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven, recipe available online here.
• Frosting recipe from Pumpkin-Raisin Bars, from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

• "Snickerdoodle Dandy," April 6, 2009.
• "A Fond and Fudgy Farewell," December 9, 2008.
• "Alexander's Birthday Party," September 21, 2008.
  
• "Red Velvet Cupcakes = True Love," January 31, 2009.

Snickerdoodle Dandy

Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies is the only cookbook I own that I've literally worn out from use. This tiny volume (I have the original hardcover edition, now out of print) only has about 50 recipes, but it contains quite a few that I go back to again and again. My heavy use of this cookbook resulted in so many pages coming loose from the binding that I actually had to buy a second copy (I wish I'd had the foresight to buy a bunch, because copies of the first edition are now quite valuable).

One of my standards from the book is the recipe for snickerdoodles. Medrich compares the taste of these cookies to "delicate, crunchy rounds of cinnamon-topped French toast."

The snickerdoodle has a rich butter cookie base (butter, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, eggs) that is refrigerated before forming the dough into balls and rolling them in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. I have found through experience that most people prefer this cookie soft, not crunchy. To get a little softer texture, I bake the cookies at 375 degrees instead of the 400 degrees specified in the recipe. The finished cookie bakes up thin, but remains soft inside -- buttery, sweet, and deliciously fragrant and flecked with cinnamon. It's a simple cookie that never fails to please.

Recipe: "Snicker Doodles" from Cookies and Brownies from Alice Medrich.

Peanut Jumbles: Extremely Ordinary

For our office happy hour last week, I decided to try out a new recipe from one of Carole Walter's cookbooks, Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets. I'm a big fan of this book. I've had good experiences with a lot of the recipes, and the book includes a color photograph of almost every cookie.

The Peanut Jumbles recipe seemed like a quick cookie I could put together with ingredients I had on hand. The peanut butter batter is made with cake flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, creamy peanut butter, dark brown sugar, sugar, eggs, and vanilla. A generous amount of whole salted peanuts are mixed in at the end.

This cookie was pleasantly moist. However, it just wasn't that interesting. The monochromatic color scheme was boring to look at, and even with the crunch and contrast of the salted peanuts, the flavor was a little blah. Tom's instantaneous opinion was that the cookie would be greatly improved with some chocolate chips. I definitely prefer the Peanut Butter Cookie with Chocolate Chunks from epicurious.com. I think I'll let this recipe fall by the wayside. It wasn't bad, but in my book, baked goods that are just so-so are quickly forgotten.

Recipe: "Peanut Jumbles" from Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets, by Carole Walter.

Earlier Post: "A Baking Beauty Secret," June 15, 2008.