Skip to main content

Ipso Fatto

Search This Blog

Ipso Fatto Instant Photos: Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies

January 05, 2010

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Recipe: Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies from epicurious.com.
Previous Post: "A Cookie For the Road," June 22, 2008.

Get link
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps

Comments

Popular Posts

What's the Difference Between a Cinnamon-Sugar Cookie and a Snickerdooodle?: Pan-Banging Snickerdoodles

Sarah Kieffer's book 100 Cookies includes two recipes for snickerdoodles -- a regular version and a pan-banging version. I decided to try the pan-banging one. It's actually identical to her pan-banging sugar cookie recipe, except that the snickerdoodles include nutmeg and are rolled in cinnamon-sugar before baking, while the sugar cookies are rolled in plain sugar. To make the batter, you beat room temperature butter with sugar until light and fluffy; add an egg and vanilla; and incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, cream of tartar, and freshly grated nutmeg). You form the dough into balls (I made a batch and a half of dough, which yielded 11 cookies formed with a #12 scoop, plus four cookies formed with a #16 scoop), roll them in cinnamon-sugar, and bake them on foil-lined baking sheets, banging the pan periodically during the last half of the baking time. As my cookies were in the oven, the thought popped into my head that it was odd the recipe doesn'

From Arkansas to Sweden via an Irish Chef: Swedish Apple Cake

The farmers market closest to our house is not open year round; it closes for a few weeks in early spring. During that break last month, my husband and I walked to a market further away that we don't normally frequent. But two vendors there had beautiful Arkansas Black apples, a cultivar that I almost never see around here. I brought a bagful home and then had to decide what to make with them. I decided to try Rachel Allen's recipe for "Swedish Apple Cake." It's a single layer cake with diced apples in the batter and sliced apples on top. To make the batter, you mix flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and sugar; add two diced apples; and mix in melted butter and eggs. The recipe does not include salt, but I added a pinch. You transfer the batter to a parchment-lined 10-inch pan, lay sliced apples on top, and bake. While the cake is in the oven, you make a glaze that you're supposed to pour over the cake while it's still warm. It seemed so straightforward and y

Last but not Least: Vanilla Buttermilk Cake with Fluffy Vanilla Frosting

The way that Yossy Arefi organized her cookbook Snacking Cakes is a little surprising to me. The recipes are divided into four sections, in this order: fruit cakes; warm + toasty cakes; chocolatey cakes; and not your average vanilla cakes. What I find so unusual is the fact that she saved her vanilla cake recipe for the very end -- I mean, vanilla cake is as basic as it gets, so I would have expected it a bit earlier. And I think it's why it's taken me so long to try the vanilla cake. Every time I flip through the cookbook, I come across so many other cakes I want to bake before I get to the end. The headnote says that "this is the closest thing to a yellow cake from a boxed mix that I've ever made in my home kitchen -- and that's a good thing!" To make the cake batter, you whisk sugar and an egg until pale; add buttermilk, melted butter, oil, vanilla paste, and salt; and whisk in flour, baking powder, and baking soda. You pour the batter into a parchment-

Caramel Through and Through: Black Tea Blondies with Caramel Swirl

I don't type out recipes in my blog (I mean, I'm an attorney, so there is that whole copyright thing), but I do try to link to websites that have reprinted recipes with the author's permission. Sometimes the recipes are reprinted in very random places. When I made Benjamina Ebuehi's Lemon, Ricotta, and Thyme Mini-Loaves , I found a copy of the recipe printed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune . But that find included a real bonus, because the Star Tribune printed several other recipes alongside it, including one for "Black Tea Blondies with Caramel Swirl" from from Tartine: A Classic Revisited . I still had some Earl Grey tea leftover after making Yossy Arefi's Chewy Earl Grey Sugar Cookies and the idea of combining tea and caramel seemed so intriguing, so I had to give the recipe a try. (And while I own the first Tartine cookbook , I don't own the Revisited one, so I wouldn't have come across this recipe otherwise.) First I made the caramel sauce.

Passover Cake that Rises to the Heavens: Feather Sponge Cake

I've made a lot of desserts for Passover but I've always avoided recipes that call for matzo meal because I don't want to be stuck with a box of meal that sits unused on the shelf for the rest of the year. Of course, the problem is that if you avoid matzo meal, you're basically limited to a few types of desserts: coconut macaroons, meringues, flourless chocolate cakes, and cakes made with nut flours. I was intrigued when I noticed that Carole Walter has a recipe in Great Cakes with a totally different Passover option, a flourless citrus sponge cake made with potato starch. The headnote promises that "If made up properly, this beautiful cake will rise to the heavens." To make the batter, you beat egg yolks and a whole egg; gradually add sugar and beat until thick and pale; add lemon and orange juice and zests; incorporate potato starch; and fold in egg whites that have been beaten with salt and sugar to soft peaks. I used a large balloon whisk to incorporate

Make Cookie Magic, No Elves Required: Homemade Magic Middles

I've never eaten a Keebler Magic Middle cookie and never will, because the cookie has been discontinued. So it wasn't nostalgia that made me try Stella Parks' recipe for Homemade Magic Middles from Bravetart . It was the simple fact that I needed some cookies for an event at the office the following day and I didn't have a lot of time. This recipe is relatively quick and easy, requiring only basic ingredients that I always have on hand. Stella's Magic Middles are essentially vanilla sugar cookies wrapped around a pure chocolate core. The filling is just finely chopped dark chocolate, so I weighed out the specified amount of Cacao Barry Extra-Bitter 64% Guayaquil and ran it through the food processor. I don't like chopping chocolate by hand -- unless it's only a small amount or a coarse chop is all that's required -- because it can be a very messy task. I put the round balls of chocolate-filled dough on a parchment-lined baking sheet and they flattened

Pastry with a Sweet Twist: Starlight Sugar Crisps

I'm still not completely confident when it comes to baking with yeast, but I am getting more comfortable trying yeast recipes and no longer try to actively avoid them. I decided to tackle a recipe from a 1950s Pillsbury Bake-Off for "Starlight Sugar Crisps" that uses what is essentially rough puff pastry with yeast. To make the dough, you cut butter into a mixture of flour and salt, and then blend in eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and active dry yeast that has been softened in warm water. You cover and chill the dough for at least two hours. You divide the chilled dough into two parts, and roll out each half into a rectangle. You make three letter folds with the dough -- folding the dough into thirds just as you would fold a piece of paper before inserting it into a #10 envelope -- sprinkling the dough with vanilla sugar before making each fold. (The vanilla sugar is supposed to be a combination of vanilla extract and sugar, but I combined the seeds from a Tahitian vanil

Baked Sunday Mornings: Bananas Cake

I love baking layer cakes, especially layer cakes from the guys at Baked . I have a pretty good track record with their cake recipes, and when I got a copy of their latest cookbook, Baked Elements , the very first recipe I tried was a peanut butter-chocolate layer cake, the oopsy daisy cake . A few months later, I tried the antique caramel cake , and I liked it so much that I made it two days in a row. But it's not always sunshine and rainbows in layer cake land. In between the oopsy daisy cake and the antique caramel cake, I had a colossal cake failure, with the bananas cake . The bananas cake is a three layers of banana cake with peanut butter filling, covered in chocolate ganache and chocolate glaze. I made it last year as a birthday cake for my co-worker Jillian. I spent hours making the cake the night before, packed it up carefully in a bakery box, and gently set it on the floor of my car before driving into work (I normally take the subway to work, but I occasionally d

Rice Krispies Treats à la Française: Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars

When I heard that Dorie Greenspan was coming out with a cookbook called Baking Chez Moi , I was expecting recipes that would be obviously French. But the book has some surprises, like her recipe for "Crispy-Topped Brown Sugar Bars." These bars have a brown sugar cookie base topped with a layer of chocolate and caramelized Rice Krispies. As Dorie explains, they are what Rice Krispies Treats would be like if they had been invented in France -- "supermodel slim, chic and bittersweet." The reason I wanted to try this recipe is that I love caramelized Rice Krispies. I first made them as part of the Baked Malted Crisp Tart -- but the process I used to caramelize the cereal for the tart was very time consuming. Dorie's method was very similar, but a lot faster. You sprinkle sugar over the bottom of a wide saucepan, moisten it with water, bring the mixture to a boil, and cook it until the sugar starts to take on color. You dump in the Rice Krispies and keep stirring

A New Gold Standard: Bravetart Chopped Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since I discovered Jacques Torres' chocolate chip cookie recipe almost a decade ago, I've become quite jaded about trying other chocolate chip cookie recipes. The Jacques Torres recipe has become my gold standard and I've been certain that no other recipe could possibly meet or exceed it. Well I've finally found a contender: the chopped chocolate chip cookie from Bravetart by Stella Parks. This recipe is meant to use chopped chocolate, not commercial chocolate chips. Stella says that using chopped chocolate "creates a blend of chunky nuggets, slender shards, and fine, powdery bits, marbling the dough with fudgy streaks and pockets of pure chocolate." The thing is, I don't usually stock block chocolate. Also, I'm not a big fan of spending lots of time chopping chocolate. But I do happen to have several varieties of Cacao Barry couverture chocolate in flat pistoles that have a high cocoa butter content and melt easily. So I cheated and used those ins

Powered by Blogger