Nothing Succeeds Like Excess: Layered Chocolate and Caramel Fudge Chip Squares

Since I baked a batch of faux-reo cookies last week to use for the chocolate cookie crust in the Baked Explorations Mississippi Mud Pie (A)/Coffee Ice Cream Tart, I wanted to find a baking project that could make use of my remaining chocolate cookie supply.  After making the Mississippi Mud Pie, I still had an entire gallon Ziploc bag full of faux-reos, and while they are actually remarkably tasty even without any cream filling, I didn't think it would be a good idea for me and my husband to simply consume them all.  I remembered that Lisa Yockelson's book ChocolateChocolate contains several recipes that include a chocolate cookie crust, none of which I've tried.  Since I coincidentally also had some Milky Way Midnight bars on hand, Yockelson's recipe for "Layered Chocolate and Caramel Fudge Chip Squares" was an easy choice.

These bars are truly decadent.  They have a chocolate cookie crust (melted butter, miniature chocolate chips, and chocolate cookie crumbs -- Yockelson specifies Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers) that is briefly baked and cooled, and then topped with a very fudgy brownie-like batter (cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, butter, unsweetened chocolate, eggs, sugar, vanilla, miniature chocolate chips, and chopped Milky Way Midnight bars).  The recipe suggests that you can either mix in all of the chocolate chips and chopped candy bars into the chocolate fudge chip batter, or mix in only half of each and reserve the other half to sprinkle on top of the bars 5 minutes before the baking time is up.  I chose the latter option.

The recipe is written to be baked in a 9-inch by 9-inch pan.  I made a batch and a half and baked it in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, so the baking time should have required almost no adjustment from the recipe's specified baking time of 35 minutes.  Thus, I pulled my pan out of the oven after 30 minutes to sprinkle on my reserved mini chocolate chips and Milky Way Midnight chunks.  But the brownies were nowhere near done baking at 35 minutes.  I had to bake the bars for an hour total, so the Milky Way chunks on top were toasted to a light brown color by the time they were done.  I was worried that I had really screwed something up and possibly completely burned the bottom crust by keeping the bars in the oven so long, but I crossed my fingers as I cooled and chilled the bars.

I'm glad I chilled the bars overnight before cutting them, because they were so fudgy that I think it otherwise would have been impossible to cut them cleanly.  I was relieved when I tried a bar and discovered that it was ultracreamy, deeply chocolately, and quite delicious.  I thought that the cookie crust added quite a bit to these bars -- while the crust was not as crunchy as I might have hoped, you could definitely taste the toasted (but thankfully not burned) chocolate flavor from the cookie crumbs.  And the best part?  Those Milky Way Midnight bars on top with caramel and nougat that took on an amazing chewy-crunchy texture during the last 30 minutes of baking. 

I feel there is something borderline sinful about these bars; they are so incredibly excessive... not just chocolate cookies, but also a superfudgy brownie, and then chocolate chips and candy bars to boot!  But once you get past the guilt, they are undeniably good. 

Recipe: "Layered Chocolate and Caramel Fudge Chip Squares" from ChocolateChocolate by Lisa Yockelson.

Previous Posts:

• "The Faux-reo: Farmeeoh Cookies," November 9, 2010.
• "Rediscovering a Long Lost Friend: Midnight Brownies," May 6, 2009.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Coffee Ice Cream (and Tart!)

I was so excited that today's assignment for Baked Sunday Mornings is coffee ice cream -- coffee ice cream is my favorite flavor!  I love the fact that every morning my husband goes downstairs to make himself some espresso; after he drinks it, he comes back upstairs smelling like a pint of coffee Häagen-Dazs.

I also figured that just having to make ice cream would be a breeze, basically a week off!  But when I looked up the recipe in the Baked Explorations recipe index, I couldn't help noticing that not only does the cookbook have a recipe for "coffee ice cream," but also one for "coffee ice cream tart."  I immediately decided that I should go ahead and make the tart if I was already going to make the ice cream.

So first, the ice cream.  This was pretty straightforward -- heat heavy cream, milk, sugar, salt, and instant espresso powder, incorporate egg yolks, heat until thickened, strain, and add Kahlua.  After you cool the mixture, you are supposed to refrigerate it for 4 hours before freezing.  I chilled my ice cream mixture for 24 hours before freezing, just because it was more convenient for my schedule; after a day in the fridge, the mixture was a pudding-like consistency.

Now for the tart.  The coffee ice cream tart recipe is actually one of two variations of Mississippi Mud Pies in the cookbook. This one is in the "Tarts and Pies" section of the book and has a chocolate cookie crust and layers of chocolate fudge, coffee ice cream, pecans, and more fudge.  The other version of Mississippi Mud Pie is in the "Cakes" section of the cookbook and features a chocolate cookie crust with layers of flourless chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and whipped cream.  The coffee ice cream tart -- "Mississippi Mud Pie (A)" -- requires a number of steps, but each of them is quite easy.

I made my own chocolate cookies for the crust (using the Farmeeoh cookie recipe from The Farm of Beverly Hills -- the recipe is a dead ringer for an Oreo).  You press a mixture of cookie crumbs, a little sugar, and melted butter into a pie pan, chill it, and then pour in a layer of fudge filling (cream butter, corn syrup, and bittersweet chocolate -- you are also supposed to add a tablespoon of Kentucky bourbon, but I skipped it).  After chilling the tart with the fudge layer for a couple of hours, you spread on a pint of softened coffee ice cream.  I froze the ice cream in the ice cream maker while the fudge layer was chilling, so I was able to spread it onto the fudge layer straight out of the ice cream maker, when it was soft and easy to spread.  After sprinkling chopped pecans on top of the ice cream layer and chilling the tart until the ice cream layer is firm, you drizzle on more fudge (cream, butter, corn syrup, and bittersweet chocolate -- and again, I skipped the bourbon).  After briefly freezing the tart again until the top layer is set, it's ready to eat.

I discovered that this tart was very easy to serve -- after it was solidly frozen, it was quite easy to just lift the entire tart out of the pie pan in one piece, and this made it a breeze to cut and plate slices.  And as for the taste?  Quite delicious!  Every component is tasty (crust, fudge, ice cream more fudge).  Every layer of the tart has a firm, but not hard texture, so it's easy to eat.  I wasn't thrilled about the pecans as the nut of choice; I was thinking that I might have preferred almonds or hazelnuts instead.  But this is an exceedingly minor quibble. 

The coffee ice cream by itself (I only needed a pint for the tart, so I had a good amount left over) is supercreamy and fairly salty.  I thought the salt worked well in the tart, but it might not be for everyone. 

As it turns out, I'm now a little concerned about my timing for making this ice cream and the ice cream tart.  With Hurricane Irene bearing down on the Eastern Seaboard, we have a high likelihood of losing power this weekend, potentially for an extended period of time (we have above ground power lines and notoriously unreliable Pepco as our electric company).  Then again, if melted ice cream is the most serious problem we encounter during this storm, Tom and I will consider ourselves pretty lucky!

Recipes: "Coffee Ice Cream" and "Mississippi Mud Pie (A), aka Coffee Ice Cream Tart," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

Swedish Baking, Continued: Mazarintarta

While I was visiting my friend Katherine at her parents' lake home in Michigan earlier this month, we made a Mazarintarta (Mazarin Torte) to serve for dessert after dinner one night (we also made the main course: a tomato confit tart).  I love almonds, and so I knew I would love this Swedish almond tart.  I did, so much so that I made the tart again after I returned home from my trip (Katherine thoughtfully provided me with a copy of the recipe before I left).

The recipe we were using instructs you to make the tart dough by hand: sift together 1 and 1/3 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/3 cup sugar onto a table, add in 1/2 cup butter and 1 egg, and mix to make a smooth dough.  At home, I made the crust in the food processor and it only took a few seconds.  At the lake, Katherine and I cut the butter into the dry ingredients with forks before mixing in the egg, so the process was a little more time consuming.  Also, we didn't have any baking powder at the lake house (and the closest store was 19 miles away), so we just skipped it.  Suprisingly, the lack of baking powder didn't have any discernible negative impact on the crust or overall tart outcome.

Katherine had warned me that even though the recipe instructs you to chill the dough and then roll it out to fit the bottom and sides of a springform pan, the dough is always too sticky to roll and so she just presses it into the pan.  She also told me that she prefers the crust to be as thin as possible.  Thus, even though the recipe is intended to make one 9-inch tart, Katherine and I used one batch of dough to make two 9-inch tart crusts (and I did the same at home), pressing the dough into the pans as thinly as possible. 

You spread a thin layer of raspberry jam over the unbaked tart crust, and then spoon the almond filling (made by creaming together 1/2 cup butter and 2/3 cups sugar, and then adding 1 cup ground almonds, 1/2 teaspoon almond extract, and 2 eggs) over the jam.  You bake the tart at 350 for about 50 minutes.

The recipe instructs you to spread more raspberry jam on top of the tart after it has cooled, and then drizzle on an icing made by mixing together 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and 1 teaspoon water.  Katherine told me that she usually leaves out the extra jam on top, so we skipped it at the lake.  We didn't have any powdered sugar on hand at the lake house either (and our effort to make our own by putting granulated sugar in the blender failed), so we also skipped the glaze.  When I made the tart again at home, I again skipped the extra raspberry jam on top (I didn't think the tart needed it, as you already get a nice dose of raspberry flavor from the layer of jam between the almond filling and the crust), and I made one tart with the powdered sugar glaze and one without.  Having now tasted the tart with the glaze, I think it's gratuitous and might actually detract from the almond flavor of the filling.

I love this tart.  The moist almond filling has a wonderful chewy texture.  I prefer the tart straight out of the fridge, as the filling seems to soften a bit and lose some of its chewiness after sitting out at room temperature.  I'm grateful for Katherine's advice on making the crust as thin as possible; the crisp, buttery crust is a nice pairing for the filling, and the overall flavor combination with the raspberry jam is perfectly harmonious.  This unadorned monochromatic tart might not look like much, but there is definitely more to it than meets the eye!  And for me personally, this tart will always bring back the special memory of an idyllic weekend with a dear friend in an amazing place of natural splendor.

Previous Post: "How Do You Say Bland in Swedish?: Syltkakor," August 18, 2011.

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!: Chicken Pot Pies

I almost never cook -- my husband is definitely a much more talented cook than I am and I'm very fortunate that he takes on all of the cooking responsibilities around here.  Tom can just go into the kitchen and whip up dinner, while I can only cook if I have a recipe to follow.  That said, I do enjoy cooking, especially when it stays in my comfort zone by involving baking -- hence my love for savory tarts.  I also put pot pies in this category; if it involves pastry, I can make it.

So recently I decided that I wanted to make chicken pot pies, and I browsed epicurious.com for a recipe.  I wanted to try Chicken and Vegetable Pot Pies with Cream Cheese Crust because the recipe was slightly unusual -- instead of the normal mix of vegetables, this one calls for sun-dried tomatoes, bell peppers, green beans, and shiitake mushrooms. 

I had considered taking a shortcut by using purchased chicken stock, but I'm so glad I didn't.  The homemade stock (made by cooking a chicken with onions, carrots, a leek, thyme, and a bay leaf, and then straining and reducing the stock) is intensely flavorful and really good.  The sauce for the chicken pot pie is made my incorporating the homemade stock into a roux, and then adding some milk, a little cream, some soup base (I used Penzey's chicken soup base), and salt and pepper.  This sauce is crazy tasty.  I wanted to just eat it by the spoonful.  

I ended up having to make a few changes in the mix of vegetables -- the green beans at the store looked terrible, and I wanted to drop off some pot pies with a friend who doesn't like mushrooms -- so I went with red, yellow, and orange bell peppers, onions, green onions, sun-dried tomatoes, peas and corn.  The crust for the pies is made in the food processor from flour, salt, butter, and cream cheese, and it was very easy to handle and roll out.  It also adhered well to the sides of the ramekins (I used some 2-cup capacity ice cream dishes that I recently bought from Williams-Sonoma -- an impulse buy because they look like paper pleated condiment cups and are just so darn cute!), so there was no leakage from the sides during baking.

These pies smelled absolutely heavenly while they were baking.  I packed some up straight out of the oven to drop off with friends, and my car smelled amazing all afternoon as a result.  These pot pies were really tasty -- very moist chicken, a great mix of vegetables (I especially liked the sun-dried tomatoes), and the lovely chicken sauce.  And the crust is fabulous.  Tender, browned, flavorful, flaky -- and so delicious when mixed in with the chicken and vegetables.

These pot pies were a little time-consuming, but they were absolutely worth the effort.

Recipe: "Chicken and Vegetable Pot Pies with Cream Cheese Crust," from epicurious.com.

How Do You Say Bland in Swedish?: Syltkakor

Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of spending a few days with my good friend Katherine and her family at her parents' lovely lake home on the Michigan Upper Peninsula.  Katherine and I have known each other for over 20 years, since we met at a summer science camp in high school.  Our favorite pastimes whenever we have a chance to get together are decidedly low key: playing Scrabble, watching mindless television programs, cooking, and baking.

This was my first trip to the Upper Peninsula, and I was entranced by the beautiful house and its serene environs.  I have never had a more relaxing vacation; my only worry was making sure that I didn't miss the spectacular sunsets on the lake.  Katherine was also able to help me out with a request for some recipes that use baker's ammonia.  Since I recently bought a bottle of the stuff from King Arthur Flour to make vanilla dreams, I've been wondering what else I can do with it.  I am planning to try making springerle for the holidays, but that's a little ways off.  But I knew that baker's ammonia is used in Swedish baking, and being of Swedish descent, Katherine was able to supply me with some recipes from a Swedish cookbook her parents had at the lake.

The first recipe I tried when I got home was Syltkakor, or Jam Cookies.  You simply cream together 10 tablespoons of butter with 1/2 cup sugar, add in 2 eggs, and then stir in 3 cups of flour sifted with 1/2 teaspoon baking ammonia.  This particular recipe instructs you to divide the dough into ten pieces, form each piece into a 10-inch length, and the roll out each piece until it's 2-inches wide.  Then you're supposed to make a depression along the length the dough with a wooden spoon handle and fill it with jam before baking the cookies.  After the cookies are baked at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes, you cut the cookies diagonally into 1-inch pieces, and frost them with an icing of powdered sugar, lemon juice, and water.

While it was easy enough for me to divide the dough into pieces that I shaped into ropes, the dough was too sticky to try to roll to a 2-inch width or to make a trough with the handle of a spoon.  So I completely shaped these cookies by hand.  I filled them with seedless raspberry spreadable fruit and skipped the icing.

I was surprised that these cookies did not have the super dry, crisp texture of the King Arthur vanilla dreams -- although I think I may have slightly underbaked them, even though I left the cookies in the oven for slightly longer than directed.  I could overlook the disappointing texture, but the main complaint I have about these cookies is that the dough has no flavor.  The bites of cookie with jam were very tasty, but the bites of plain cookie were just bland.  Perhaps these would have been more flavorful if I had added the icing, but I think that some vanilla and salt would fix the problem (I didn't notice before I baked these that the recipe doesn't call for any salt; perhaps the use of salted butter is assumed).  I'd like to try this recipe again with some vanilla and salt, but until then, I would definitely rank Gale Gand's Giant's Thumbprint Cookies as a far superior jam cookie.

I'm looking forward to working my way through the stack of other Swedish recipes that Katherine gave me! 

Previous Posts:

• "This Cookie Dough Really Stinks: Vanilla Dreams," July 9, 2011.
• "A Lasting Impression: Giant Thumbprint Cookies," February 24, 2009.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Grasshopper Bars

I have to admit, I was a little bummed to see that Baked Sunday Mornings had Grasshopper Bars on the schedule for today... Not because I don't love chocolate and mint (I absolutely do) or because I didn't think that the bars pictured with the recipe looked beautiful and delicious (I did).  But I am in the middle of a little summer baking tasteoff project where I am trying to identify the best brownie.  As a result, every other week I've been baking four different brownies and asking a group of tasters to compare them head-to-head, rank, and score them.  I've finished all four of the preliminary rounds (although I am little behind in blogging about them -- but you can read about the first three rounds: classic, superfudgy, and fruity), but I am definitely suffering from brownie fatigue.

Nonetheless, for the sake of the bakealong, I was happy to give this recipe a try.  To make these bars, you make a short brownie layer (which is essentially a half batch of the base brownie used for the Baked sweet and salty brownie), and then top it with a layer of mint buttercream and a chocolate glaze.

The buttercream is made by cooking sugar, flour, milk, and cream until it boils and thickens, beating the mixture until cool, incorporating butter and beating until fluffy, and then adding mint extract and creme de menthe.  The day I was baking these, my husband Tom offered to pick up some creme de menthe for me on the way home from work.  When he got home, he handed me a bottle of creme de menthe white, which is colorless (I actually didn't know that such a thing existed -- I had always thought that the Scope-green color was a defining characteristic of creme de menthe).  I contemplated adding some green food coloring so that I would get the minty-green colored buttercream pictured in the cookbook, but I decided to leave well enough alone.  The chocolate glaze is made by heating chocolate, butter, and corn syrup.  The glaze was a thin and glossy mixture that spread to a perfectly level and impossibly smooth finish over the chilled buttercream.

I was very curious to see how this bar would compare to my standard mint brownie from Bon Appétit. I was expecting the grasshopper bar to be more minty, since it has such a thick layer of mint buttercream (which is flavored with both a teaspoon of mint extract and three tablespoons of creme de menthe).  However, the grasshopper bar is only mildly minty, which I quite liked.  The major flavor difference between this bar and the mint brownie is that the mint brownie has mint extract in the brownie as well as the topping, so there's no way to escape the mint.  Since the grasshopper bar has no mint in the brownie layer, it seemed more chocolately and less minty overall to me (despite the fact that it has equal volumes of brownie and buttercream; the fact that the grasshopper bar has a fudgier brownie component no doubt also contributes to this impression). 

I would have to taste the mint brownie and the grasshopper bar side by side to really figure one which one I like better.  I decided not to take the grasshopper bars to work, because I didn't want to throw a wrench into the brownie tasteoff; the Bon Appétit mint brownie is headed for the tasteoff finals, and I wouldn't know what to do if people decided that they liked this bar better! I've already decided that I need to have the mint brownie vs. grasshopper bar tasteoff someday... But only after I've had a chance to recover from my current brownie overload!

Recipe: "Grasshopper Bars," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

Brownie Tasteoff, Round 3: Fruity Brownies

When I originally conceived of the idea for the brownie tasteoff, I planned to have 16 brownies competing in four different brackets.  But when it came to the fruity bracket, I just couldn't narrow it down to four, and so I made an exception and had five brownies competing in this round.  Granted, I also gave myself a little leeway in deciding what fell into the category of "fruity."  Here is a picture of the line up.

As was the case with the previous tasteoff rounds of classic brownies and superfudgy brownies, tasters were asked to sample all five fruity brownies, rank them in order of preference from 1-5 (with 1 being best), and also assign them a numerical score from 1-10 (with 10 being best).

Brownie A was the Chocolate Fudge Brownie with Toffee and Dried Cherries from Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen.  While I've always thought it's hard to detect the toffee bits (in this case, Heath Bar Baking Bits) in the final product, the chewy texture of the dried cherries is unmistakable, and chocolate chunks also add texture to these brownies.  Several tasters commented that the brownies could use more toffee, or that the cherries overpowered the toffee.  Many weighed in favorably on the pairing of chocolate with cherries generally.  Others remarked that the chocolate flavor of this brownie was not particularly prominent.

Brownie B was the orange-chocolate Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bite from the Los Angeles Times test kitchen.  I've occasionally had some problems baking this brownie before, and unfortunately, it happened to me again this time.  While normally this brownie flavored with orange zest and Grand Marnier and studded with mini chocolate chips has a moist melt-in-your-mouth texture, this batch of brownies came out very dense and hard.  I decided to serve them anyway, even though I knew this particular batch did not properly represent the recipe's potential.  There were many complaints about the brownie being dry and having a chalky texture.  Several tasters professed a general dislike for the combination of chocolate and orange.  Others complained that the brownie was too orangey.  I feel bad that I wasn't able to showcase these brownies at their best.

Brownie C was the Ginger Brownie from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor.  This brownie contains ginger preserved in syrup, and the flavor combination elicited quite varied responses from tasters.  Some tasters felt that it was too gingery, with others felt that the ginger flavor was too mild.  A few commented that the ginger-chocolate flavor combination was "interesting."  Many tasters complimented this brownie's fudgy texture.  

Brownie D was the Fudgy-Chocolate Raspberry Bar from epicurious.com, with raspberry preserves in both the bar and the glaze.  While the recipe title refers to these as bars and not brownies, they always turn out superfudgy, and so I have always considered them to be a brownie.  I have made this bar countless times, and in this one instance, for the first time ever, I got something that resembled moist chocolate cake instead of a superfudgy brownie (maybe trying to make five brownies at once instead of just four for this round of the tasteoff resulted in baker error for Brownies B and D).  Despite the fact that these did not come out the way I intended, they were generally well received (except for numerous comments that these were too cakey -- which, of course, they were).  Many tasters professed an affinity for the combination of raspberry and chocolate.  While many specifically singled out the raspberry-chocolate glaze for praise, others thought it was gratuitous.

Brownie E was the Mint Brownie from epicurious.com.  I always make these without nuts, although the recipe calls for pecans.  Several tasters favorably commented that these brownies evoke the flavor of an Andes mint.  Many noted that mint and chocolate together were a favorite flavor combination.  However, multiple tasters complained that the brownie was too minty or that the chocolate flavor in this brownie was not prominent enough. 

And the winner of the fruity round is... Well, I'm going to have to call this round a tie.  Voting was more scattershot than in the previous two rounds of the tasteoff, and there was no clear winner.  Looking at rankings (where a lower rank is better), Brownie A, the Chocolate Fudge Brownie with Toffee and Dried Cherries (average rank 2.51) just barely nudged out Brownie E, the Mint Brownie (average rank 2.53), to take first place.  However, with regard to average score on a scale of 1-10 (where a higher score is better), the Mint Brownie (average score 7.32) beat out the Chocolate Fudge Brownie with Toffee and Dried Cherries (average score 7.01).  In the addition, the Mint Brownie was actually ranked first by the most tasters (14 out of 47, compared to only 12 who ranked the Toffee and Dried Cherry Brownie first).

Coming in third was the Fudgy-Chocolate Raspberry Bar (average score 6.81), followed by the Ginger Brownie (average score 6.11), with the orange-flavored Midnight Brownie Bite coming in last (average score 5.83).  Because voting was essentially a dead heat between Brownie A and Brownie E, I decided it was only fair to advance both of the them to the final round of the tasteoff. 

Recipes:

• "Chocolate Fudge Brownies with Toffee and Dried Cherries," from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley.
• "Midnight Chocolate Brownie Bites," from the July 2, 2008 Los Angeles Times.
• "Ginger Brownies" from Baking by Flavor by Lisa Yockelson.
• "Fudgy-Chocolate Raspberry Bars" from epicurious.com.
• "Mint Brownies" from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

• "Brownie Tasteoff, Round 1: Classic Brownies," July 6, 2011.
• "Brownie Tasteoff, Round 2: SuperFudgy Brownies," July 23, 2011.
• "Making Brownies with Chocolate in Short Supply," May 14, 2009.
• "A Mysterious Midnight Bite," July 8, 2008.
• "A Creamy Chocolately Ginger Treat: Ginger Brownies," August 3, 2010.
• "A Fond and Fudgy Farewell," December 9, 2008.

Pop Goes the Pop Tart: Homemade Pop-Tarts

I will readily admit that Pop Tarts were one of my favorite childhood foods. I only ate the strawberry variety, with the red jammy filling, hard white frosting, and multi-colored crunchy sprinkles. Most of the time I ate them cold, straight out of the box -- because although a warm Pop Tart is delicious, I was never patient enough to wait for them to cool off after coming out of the toaster, so I would inevitably burn my mouth. Homemade toaster pastries seem to be trendy of late, and I've seen a lot of different recipes floating around. I decided to try Joanne Chang's recipe for "Homemade Pop-Tarts" from her cookbook Flour.

The dough for Chang's Pop Tarts is a pate brisee. You combine flour, sugar, and salt in a stand mixer, and toss in some cubed cold butter and mix until there are small butter pieces throughout.  Then you add egg yolks and cold milk.  You dump out the dough, gather it into a mound, and use palm of your hand to work through it, smearing the butter chunks into the dough (watch a video of Joanne making the dough here).  Then you gather up the dough and chill it for at least four hours.

I chilled my dough for a day and found it very easy to handle and roll out -- no sticking, tearing, or stretching. To make the Pop Tarts, you roll out half of the dough, brush it with a beaten egg, cut it into rectangles, and top each rectangle with two tablespoons of jam. Then you roll out the rest of the dough and cut in into matching rectangles, lay them on top, and press to adhere. You bake the pastries until golden brown, and after they are cool, top the pastries with a vanilla glaze made from powdered sugar, vanilla, and water. I used a toaster pastry press from Williams Sonoma (impulse purchase because it was on sale) to cut out my Pop Tarts, so they had a nice scalloped edge.

This recipe yields eight pastries, and I baked mine in two batches of four. For the first batch, I filled each pastry with 2 tablespoons of strawberry jam (homemade by my friend Kelly with delicious strawberries from Michigan -- thank you!). I used a fork to crimp around the edges of each pastry before baking, but each of the pastries had a significant amount of jam leak out during baking. For the second batch, I reduced the amount of filling to just over one tablespoon, and took extra care to crimp even more carefully -- but I still had some jam leakage. I'm not sure why I had this problem, but I think that the pastries I filled with more jam had a better filling-to-crust ratio than the ones with less. I want to try making these again and seeing if I can figure out how to prevent the filling from leaking out; I'm also interested in putting in some fresh fruit along with jam.  

As you can see from the photo above, Chang's homemade version of Pop Tarts has one striking difference from the real thing -- the homemade dough is very flaky. Despite the physical resemblance, someone tasting the homemade version would never mistake it for a real Pop Tart, because the flaky crust makes the pastries a lot closer to a hand pie. But if your goal is merely to produce adorable, delicious pastry and not necessarily achieve Pop Tart verisimilitude, then these definitely fit the bill!  Yum!

Recipe: "Homemade Pop-Tarts" from Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery + Cafe, by Joanne Chang, recipe available here (with video!).

Fearless Baking: Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies

A few months ago, I bought a copy of The Fearless Baker: Scrumptious Cakes, Pies, Cobblers, Cookies and Quick Breads That You Can Make to Impress Your Friends and Yourself, by Emily Luchetti and Lisa Weiss.  I ordered the book as soon as I heard that Emily Luchetti had another cookbook coming out, because I own some of her other cookbooks (Stars Desserts and A Passion for Desserts) and like them quite a bit.

So I was surprised when my cookbook arrived and it looked nothing like the other ones I own.  No dust jacket (probably a plus, since the dust jackets on my cookbooks just get dirty and torn anyway).  No full color photos, just some simple color drawings of utensils and ingredients and the such.  Almost no photos of any of the finished baked goods -- the vast majority of the photos (which a few and far between) are small, black and white, and feature people doing prep work (stirring, whisking, measuring, chopping or sifting), or in one case, a dog look expectantly at someone doing prep work.  Most distracting to me are the snippets of dialogue (presented in blue and orange-colored talk bubbles) that accompany many of the recipes.

The premise of this cookbook, as explained in the introduction, is to provide guidance and hand-holding to people who are afraid of baking -- to turn terrified bakers into fearless ones.  To this end, Luchetti and Weiss gathered friends and family who were not experienced bakers and stood by to answer questions and give guidance as they followed Luchetti's recipes.  Apparently the little conversations that appear next to recipes are derived from these baking lessons.  I find them quite annoying; I can't rule out that they might actually be helpful to a fearful novice baker.

Anyway, I finally got around to trying a recipe from this cookbook, "Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies."  I chose the recipe because it can be made quickly (no need to chill dough before baking) and I happened to have all of the ingredients on hand.  To make this dough, you mix together butter, sugar, and brown sugar, add in smooth peanut butter, eggs and vanilla, incorporate dry ingredients (flour, salt, and baking powder), and then stir in honey-roasted peanuts.  You form the dough into balls, press more honey-roasted peanuts on top of each cookie, and bake.

This dough was quite soft and I was afraid that the cookies might spread a lot in the oven.  However, the dough didn't spread much at all, and I had to flatten the cookies before baking to get a better finished appearance.  The recipe warns you not to overcook these, so I took them out of the oven when the edges were just beginning to turn golden.  The cookies were surprisingly moist, and almost light in texture.  The honey-roasted peanuts added great texture and a nice salty-sweet mix of flavors to the cookie.  Tom said that this cookie reminded him of the Nutty Peanut Butter Cookies from Amy's Bakery that I made recently.  Without tasting them side-by-side, I can't really say which one I like better -- but both are certainly very good peanut butter cookies.

Recipe: "Honey-Roasted Peanut Butter Cookies" from The Fearless Baker, by Emily Luchetti and Lisa Weiss. 

Previous Posts:

• "The Sweeter Side is Sometimes Salty: Nutty Peanut Butter Cookies," March 16, 2011. 
• "Peanut Jumbles: Extremely Ordinary," April 6, 2009.