Baking During the Spelling Bee: Geusioleptic Treats for the Lickerish

I love the Scripps National Spelling Bee. While I'm not a particularly adept speller myself, I consider the annual event to be must-see TV. I was thrilled when they started broadcasting the final rounds during primetime on network television a few years ago. Before that, the Bee was only carried on ESPN, a channel I tune in to only twice a year -- to watch the early rounds of the Bee and the July 4th Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

The Bee is nonstop drama, interspersed with equal parts of tension, wonder, triumph, and heartbreak. The spellers are under incredible amounts of pressure and for the most part they handle it with great aplomb. Their seemingly endless knowledge of words is so impressive that it's easy to forget that these kids are only middle schoolers. But the "ding" of the bell indicating a spelling error is often followed by an irrepressible flood of tears and a rush for comfort from mom or dad, reminding us that even wunderkinder are not invincible.

I watched the final rounds of the Bee last night while I baked a batch of red velvet cupcakes for a friend. The semifinal rounds earlier in the day featured some interesting food-related words, and I was glad to see this trend continue into the finals. I was particularly amused when the first word in Round 8 was "geusioleptic," which official pronouncer Jacques Bailly defined as having or characterized by a pleasant taste or flavor. Often the words in the final rounds of the Bee seem so obscure so as to border on the absurd. I wonder if anyone really uses this five-syllable word when you could get the same message across by using "tasty" instead.

Later on in the same round, ABC aired a pre-taped segment on speller Kavya Shivashankar (who was the last speller standing and declared the champion eight rounds later), in which she said the word that best describes her is "lickerish," meaning "fond of good food." I might actually have to start using "lickerish" in regular conversation. I love the sing-song quality of the word (it's pronounced just like "licorice"), and it seems so much less pretentious than "foodie."

I was quite happy with the way the cupcakes came out, and I piped on the cream cheese frosting in rosettes and added some lip-shaped sprinkles on top (they were a random holdover from a Valentine's Day assortment). I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the cupcakes were both good-looking and geusioleptic!

Recipes:

• Red Velvet Cake from Cake Man Raven.
• Frosting recipe from Pumpkin-Raisin Bars, from epicurious.com.
  

Previous Posts:

• "Red Velvet Cupcakes = True Love," January 31, 2009.
• "Holiday Part Recap, Part III: Ready For a Throwdown!," December 17, 2008.
  

Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: Caramel Pecan Cookies

Recipe: Caramel Pecan Cookies from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "It's Starting to Taste a Little Like Autumn," September 17, 2008.

The Mildly Peanut Butter Milk Chocolate Cookie

Continuing my steady march through Baked, I tried the recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks on Monday. This recipe specifically calls for milk chocolate and includes an admonishment not to replace the milk chocolate chunks with semisweet chips. I am generally not a fan of milk chocolate, but I played along and used Guittard milk chocolate chips (I didn't have any milk chocolate bars to cut into chunks). The recipe instructions call for the dough (made with flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, dark brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, creamy peanut butter, and milk chocolate) to be chilled for at least 3 hours before the dough is formed into balls, flattened slightly, sprinkled with sugar, and baked.

After all of the time the batter spent chilling, the cookies kept their shape well during baking. They came out of the oven round, golden brown, and fairly flat, looking a lot like old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies. They also had a nice soft texture, which is particularly nice given that peanut butter cookies can sometimes be a bit dry. However, their soft texture caused me a near anxiety attack the next day. It's been very humid this week, and when I left the cookies out on cooling racks on the kitchen counter overnight, the following morning they had turned into a horrifying scene straight out of the Salvador Dali painting. Any part of a cookie that was hanging off the edge of a rack had drooped and broken off completely. I panicked that my floppy cookies were not going to be salvageable. Fortunately, after some recuperation time in the refrigerator, the cookies regained their structural integrity and I felt okay taking them in to the office.

I thought this cookie was fine, but it could definitely use some improvement. First, I didn't think that the peanut butter flavor was pronounced enough. Next time I might try chunky peanut butter to see if that gives the peanut flavor a bit of a boost. I also thought that the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough -- the milk chocolate was so mild that it was barely detectable. The recipe only called for 6 oz. of milk chocolate, which I didn't think was enough. I might go ahead and disregard the instruction not to use semisweet chips instead next time, or at the very least, I would use a lot more milk chocolate.

Recipe: "Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

Too Hot to Handle: Almond Green Tea Cupcakes

As I always do when I first get a new cookbook, I flipped through every page of Baked: New Frontiers in Baking after Tom gave it to me for Christmas, and I used Post-It flags to mark the recipes I wanted to try. I've already made it through a few (Sweet and Salty Cake, Root Beer Bundt Cake, Peanut Butter Crispy Bars, and the Baked Brownie), but today I finally got to try the recipe from the cookbook that I've been most eagerly anticipating. I've been itching to try the "Almond Green Tea Cucpakes" recipe since I saw the lovely photo of an almond-colored cupcake with large dollop of pale green frosting, topped with a fortune cookie. You can see the photo and the recipe in its entirety at the "Cupcakes Take The Cake" blog, here.

Almond is my favorite flavor of all time, and green tea is pretty high up there on my list as well. I've had green tea flavored cakes and desserts before (and apparently this is a growing trend, because just a couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times food section ran an article on green tea desserts), but I had never come across a recipe that paired almond and green tea together. I thought the flavor combination sounded fantastic.

I decided to make the almond green tea cupcakes this afternoon to take to a friend's backyard barbecue. The cupcake part of the recipe is pretty straightforward, and the batter did yield exactly 24 cupcakes. The cupcake batter was very white, and the cupcakes hardly colored at all in the oven. The frosting recipe took a little more work. I was able to make a sort of green tea custard by cooking a mixture of sugar, flour, matcha green tea powder, milk, and cream on the stove until it thickened and came to a boil. I strained the hot mixture and beat it in the stand mixer until it had cooled, and then added butter and vanilla. At that point, even though the frosting was at room temperature, it was a little too soupy to use. After about an hour in the refrigerator and another few turns in the stand mixer, the frosting was firm enough to pipe onto the cupcakes. I skipped the fortune cookie on top.


I used some scalloped-edge floral design cupcake liners that I bought on impulse when I was at Little Bitts shopping for sugar doves last month, and I thought they looked just lovely with the final color scheme. My frosting color was much darker than what was pictured in cookbook photo, but I thought that it was quite nice -- the color pretty much screamed "green tea!"

Unfortunately, my cupcakes were not able to withstand the D.C. weather. I had to pack up the cupcakes and take them to the barbecue right after I frosted them, and I didn't have time to put them back in the fridge for the frosting to set a little more firm. It was in the high 80s today, and before too long, I noticed that the frosting was melting on the cupcakes as they were outside at the barbecue. Also, while the cupcakes were definitely cooked, they were quite crumbly, and I noticed that people eating the cupcakes were were experiencing significant difficulty confronting the dual challenges of runny frosting and excess cupcake crumbs. Next time I will probably bake the cupcakes for a minute or two longer and definitely make sure that the frosting has time to set up hard in the fridge (or at the very least, I will not serve these outside on a hot day again!).

There definitely will be a next time. I really liked this cupcake. The flavors were subtle and not too sweet, and the texture of the cupcake was very light. It's an interesting and unusual flavor combination and a refreshing change of pace from the many dense and fudgy desserts that I often make.

Recipe: "Almond Green Tea Cupcakes" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Cupcakes Take The Cake.

A Fifties Throwback: I'm Throwing This One Back!

Wednesday night I was looking for a recipe to make something for an office happy hour, and I decided to try out "Chewy Butterscotch Loaf" from Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites from the Past 200 Years, by Greg Patent. According to the introductory text, the recipe was adapted from an entry in the 1954 Pillsbury Bakeoff that won $7,500. I figured that since $7,500 was a whole heck of a lot of money in 1954, the recipe had to be pretty good. Plus, the recipe has the strong appeal of requiring less than 10 minutes total prep time. All you have to do is mix together some eggs, instant espresso, dark brown sugar, and a little butter, heat the mixture in a double boiler until the batter is hot, add in a sifted mixture of flour, baking powder, and salt, stir in some toasted pecans and vanilla, and spread the mixture into a 9- by 13-inch pan. It only takes 25 minutes to bake, so you can complete the whole cake from start to finish in just over half an hour.

I did not care for this cake at all. As the recipe name suggests, the texture was chewy and sticky, almost like gingerbread. I happen to like that feature of gingerbread, but here I thought it was just annoying. I used to think that nothing sticks to parchment paper, but this cake does. It was a total mess to cut and serve. And the flavor was just so blah. I can imagine that this cake might be good topped with some vanilla ice cream and caramel sauce, but on its own, I thought it was pretty uninspired. I'm happy to leave this sticky mess back in the past.

Recipe: "Chewy Butterscotch Loaf" from Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites from the Last 200 Years, by Greg Patent.

Mmmmm, Wheat Germ... Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from Auntie Em's Kitchen

A few weeks ago when my friend's daughter Joanna asked me to make some baked goods for a reception at her office, one of her specific requests was for an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. I politely suggested that she reconsider that particular item, since I don't have an oatmeal cookie recipe that I'm really crazy about. I did pick up an okay oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe from the Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS column years ago (the recipe is from the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla; it was originally printed in the column on April 9, 1987, and reprinted on May 15, 2002), but it's never been one of my favorites.

A few months ago I spotted another interesting looking oatmeal cookie recipe in the Culinary SOS column, this one from Auntie Em's Kitchen in Eagle Rock. The recipe caught my eye because of the somewhat unusual addition of wheat germ. Also, I liked the fact that the recipe called for golden raisins. One of the unfortunate mixups that I have often witnessed with oatmeal raisin cookies occurs when people see the cookies from a distance and get excited, only to be let down when they get up close and realize that the dark blobs that they thought were chocolate chips are actually just dried fruit. Very tragic.

Last night I finally remembered to buy some wheat germ, and I was able to give the Auntie Em's recipe a try. The recipe says to use 1/4 cup of batter per cookie, which seemed to me to be pretty excessive. That would be a #16 scoop worth of batter, which is the same size scoop I use to make regular-sized muffins. Instead, I used a #30 scoop, which is about 2 tablespoons. Still, the resulting cookies were very large, about 3.5 inches in diameter.

The cookies spread quite a bit during baking and I discovered through trial and error that they kept their shape a lot better if the dough was chilled in the refrigerator for a bit before baking. The resulting cookies were thin and extremely chewy, with a crisp exterior. Because the cookies were so thin, they were slightly fragile and needed careful handling. They were also a bit homely, given their monochromatic color scheme and lumpy bumpy top surface. But the cookies were tasty enough and their unusual chewy texture gets an A. I'm going to keep looking for the perfect oatmeal cookie recipe, but this one will do just fine until I find it!

Recipe: "Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from Auntie Em's Kitchen," from the Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS Column, February 25, 2009.

Joe's Birthday Macaroons

My office is located in what's referred to as my agency's "satellite" building, which is located roughly 0.8 miles away from our headquarters building in downtown D.C. Having personnel split between two buildings does cause some inconveniences. We have a shuttle bus that runs continuously between the two buildings throughout the day to transport people who need to get from one building to the other.

One consequence of my location in the satellite building is that Joe, the paralegal who's been helping me with a matter since last fall and whose office is located at headquarters, does not have easy access to the baked goods that I bring to the office each week. When I remember, I set aside a baked goods allotment for him and I put it on the shuttle for delivery. (The shuttle not only carries passengers from building to building, but also documents and packages that can't wait for interoffice mail.)

In honor of Joe's birthday this weekend, I asked him if he had a baked goods request, and he asked for pistachio maracoons. Given how iffy these were the last time I made them, I was a little nervous about disappointing him with suboptimal baked goods, and I asked if he wouldn't prefer a nice birthday cake or cupcakes instead... But he was sure, so I put forth my best effort.

Last time I made these macaroons, they were a little undercooked and moist in the middle, so I increased the baking time a bit this time around. The batter came out completely different than before. Instead of puffing up in the oven, these cookies stayed fairly flat and I baked them until they were a deep golden brown to make sure that they were done in the middle. The finished product looked nothing like a traditional macaroon -- it was rather flat and looked almost like a regular cookie. But the texture was spot on, extremely chewy. Also, since the cookies were so thin, the ratio of pistachio buttercream filling to macaroon was much higher than last time.

I was really not particularly pleased with the overall way these came out, since they just looked wrong and should have been a lot thicker. But I was happy with the strong pistachio flavor, the very chewy texture, and the borderline excessive amount of buttercream filling. Maybe one of these days I will finally get this recipe right. In any case, Joe professed his approval, which I guess is all that matters!

Recipe: "Pistachio Macaroons" from How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson.
Previous Post: "A Tough Cookie to Crack," March 5, 2009.

Making Brownies With Chocolate in Short Supply

I've somehow managed to let my supply of unsweetened chocolate dwindle to critically low levels. I normally order my unsweetened Guittard chocolate discs from the King Arthur Flour catalog in the early fall and/or late winter, so that they will be shipped during cool weather conditions (I usually also wait for a free shipping deal). While I can also just walk over to the nearby Whole Foods and buy a bar of unsweetened Scharffen Berger, I just can't bring myself to pay the exorbitant price for the stuff, given that I go through large amounts of chocolate pretty quickly. Equally important, I haven't seen unsweetened discs (as opposed to chocolate bars) available at retail. Bars are a huge pain because of all the extra work and mess involving in chopping them. Discs are easy to pour and weigh, and the small-sized pieces melt quickly.

I completely forgot to order more chocolate before the warm weather of spring arrived, and I'm down to my last pound. I just checked the King Arthur website and they've increased their unsweetened chocolate prices to $9.50 a pound, which is a big bummer. So while I'm researching potential new chocolate sources, I'm hoarding the last bit of my supply. I was in the mood to make some brownies this week, and so I made a specific effort to pick a recipe that uses cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate.

I decided to try out "Chocolate Fudge Brownies with Toffee and Dried Cherries," from In the Sweet Kitchen: the Definitive Baker's Companion, by Regan Daley. I really like this cookbook, which won the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award in 2001. It's quite a hefty volume, coming in at almost 700 pages -- but more than half of the book is comprised of information on tools, techniques and ingredients, with the remainder taken up with recipes.

This particular recipe is actually written to make cookies, and it calls for flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, butter, dark brown sugar, sugar, eggs, vanilla, dried sour cherries, chocolate chunks, and English toffee pieces. A note at the end of the recipe offers a variation to turn the recipe into brownies instead, simply by substituting cake flour for the all-purpose flour in the cookie version and spreading the resulting batter into a pan. This recipe fit my requirement of using cocoa instead of unsweetened chocolate, and it so happens that I always have dried Montmorency cherries and Heath Bar baking bits on hand (although I did take a shortcut and use chocolate chips instead of chopping my own chocolate chunks).

The end result was really delicious. It was moist but not very fudgy, with a complex deep and earthy flavor that was not too sweet. The Heath Bar bits were not detectable in the final product, but the dried cherries added a wonderful textural element and a tart bite. I hope to replenish my chocolate supply soon, but it's good to know that I can still crank out some pretty yummy treats in the meantime!

Recipe: "Chocolate Fudge Brownies with Toffee and Dried Cherries," from In the Sweet Kitchen: the Definitive Baker's Companion, by Regan Daley.

Rediscovering a Long Lost Friend: Midnight Brownies

A few weeks ago, my friend's daughter Joanna asked if I would be interested in supplying the baked goods for a reception they were going to be hosting at her office this week. After figuring out that I could fit the baking project into my schedule, we discussed the details. Joanna had several specific requests, which included mint chocolate chip cookies (which I thought was funny, since her father is the person who originally gave me that recipe), gingersnaps, and Milky Way brownies.

Milky Way brownies? I knew Joanna was referring to the "Midnight Brownie" recipe contributed by Lisa Yockelson to The Good Cookie: Over 250 Delicious Recipes, from Simple to Sublime, by Tish Boyle. The recipe gets its name from the inclusion of chopped bits of Milky Way Midnight candy bars (the "Midnight" version of the Milky Way is vanilla nougat and caramel covered in dark chocolate; the diced candy bars that go into the batter are pictured at the top of this post). At one point in time, this was my go-to fudgy brownie recipe. But I literally couldn't remember the last time I had made these brownies, and so I checked my baking records. Since early 2002, I've been keeping a detailed handwritten record of everything I bake, including notes on yields, baking times, and results. I also maintain an index organized by recipe name, so it was easy enough for me to look up the last time I made this particular recipe. Inexplicably, I hadn't made these brownies since January 2006.

I racked my brain to try and figure out why I had let this recipe fall by the wayside. I first tried this recipe in the fall of 2004 and I instantly fell in love with it, making it six times in six weeks. The recipe (flour, cake flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt, butter, unsweetened chocolate, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and candy bars) produces a very tall and fudgy brownie speckled with beautiful bits of caramel and nougat from the candy bars. It's a decadent and unusual treat.

I still can't figure out why I forgot about this recipe, although I do know that in mid-2007, the Recchiuti Fudgy Brownie became my go-to fudgy brownie recipe. I'm extremely grateful that Joanna asked for this brownie, because it was wonderful to rediscover a forgotten recipe -- it's a bit like reuniting with an old friend you haven't seen in ages. I'm smitten all over again... I couldn't help myself from baking another batch last night to take to the office!

Recipe: "Midnight Brownies" from The Good Cookie: Over 250 Delicious Recipes, From Simple to Sublime, by Tish Boyle.