Late-Night Cobbler

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

Sometimes you get home late and need something hot from the oven, but you’re too tired to bake anything requiring eggs and several cups of flour. This would be a great opportunity to make cobbler for one. This blueberry cobbler happened back when blueberries were around (though I saw some at the farmer’s market yesterday…hmm), but you can use any fruit that’s in season when you want it. Frozen fruit also works well.

Late-Night Cobbler for One

1/3 cup fruit (berries, chopped stone fruit or apples, etc)
2 tablespoons brown sugar1/2 tablespoon butter, at room temperature or in small pieces
2 teaspoons flour
1 tablespoon oats
Drizzle of honey (optional)

Place the fruit in a ramekin. In a separate bowl, mix up the brown sugar, butter, flour and oats with your fingers. Drizzle some honey over the fruit if you’d like. If not, top the fruit with the crumble and put in the first third of the oven at 400° until juices are coming out around the edges of the crumble, around 10-15 minutes. Let cool, seriously. It will be very hot! Enjoy and repeat as necessary.

Oat and Date Cookies

July 26, 2015July 26, 2015 Carmen2 Comments

I saw a post on Buzzfeed that read something along the lines of “20 treats to make with all your leftover dates from Ramadan” and that inspired me to share my beloved oat and date cookie recipe. It’s super easy and gives you chewy sweetness in one bite.

Oat and Date Cookies
Makes about 25 small cookies
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, cut up
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup coarsely chopped mejdool dates

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs, and sticks together when molded into hands. Add the egg, beating until just blended. Mix in the sugar, oats, and dates. Drop tablespoons of the dough 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. This dough should be very firm.

Bake until lightly browned, 12-15 minutes, at 350 degrees. Cool on the sheets until the cookies firm slightly. Enjoy slightly warm or at room temperature!

Galettes are Goood

July 15, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

Don’t be daunted by the beautiful galette – oh, you’re not? Great news. They’re quite easy (easier than pie, in fact) and fun to put together. I’ve been wanting to try one for a while now, and I finally got to with my mom when I went home last weekend. No recipe here, just procedure. You most likely have a preferred pie crust recipe in your arsenal. If not, you could easily find one.

The filling comes first. You can make sweet galettes OR savory. This is me, though, so I went with my preferred stone fruit: nectarines. So juicy and sweet. I cut three medium nectarines and placed the slices in a bowl. Sprinkled some sugar and flour. Here’s where you can add spices or herbs of your choice, but I kept it simple.

My mom made this crust. No white flour? No problem. Whole wheat is hearty and now your galette is even more healthy than it was before, which is fairly healthy if you do it right (in my opinion of course)…

Now comes the fun part. Lay out the dough onto a baking sheet. It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle, but the rounder the better. Dump your filling in the center, and adjust according to your preference of galette thickness and width. I eyeballed the nectarines and it worked out pretty well. Reasonable height (an inch?) with just enough crust left for folding in. Don’t get too bogged down by how it looks while folding. Some galettes are fully covered, and others are barely covered at all. The pastry won’t be moving much in the oven, so don’t go crazy with coverage of you don’t want to.

Throw in the oven at 425° for 35-40 minutes. If the crust is soggy at first, it will solidify up after it has cooled.

Baking without a solid recipe or strict plan is exhilarating. We should all try it more often. Happy improving!

Dad’s Mango Bread

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 Carmen2 Comments

Mango bread…does that sound strange and exotic to you? I was pondering it while sharing mine with friends and I heard them say it. For my own family, mango bread was a standard, normal thing to have in the house, though I do realize that this may not be the case in most American households. For a time we always had a loaf on hand, and three in the freezer. My dad would make big batches of the stuff to make breakfast during the week a little better. I never made it myself, but got to experience the different adjustments with every few rounds of baking. In honor of Father’s Day, and mostly because I was reminded of this bread when prompted at work to share our fathers’ recipes, I decided to have a go myself. Disclaimer: neither name spelling nor ingredients are 100% accurate in that article. In any case, it was a great opportunity for me to buy some mangoes and fire up the oven for a better-than-banana quick bread of champions.

Fresh mangoes are the best mangoes! Also ripe, but sometimes you just can’t wait.

You’ll need some for puréeing and some for chunking.

Immersion blenders are fun, but occasionally messy. If you have the right bowl, you’ll be in good shape.

Not-so-secret ingredient:coconut

An important step here is combining the baking soda with the mango purée. Read below for more info…

Dad’s Mango Bread
Makes one large loaf

1 large mango, puréed (about 1 1/4 cup purée)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons water1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 sweetened shredded coconut
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup chopped mango
1/2 cup yogurt
Place the mango purée in a large bowl. Separately, combine the baking soda and water, then mix into the mango purée. Let sit for 5 minutes*. In the meantime, combine the sugar, eggs, oil, and coconut in a new bowl until well incorporated. Mix this into the mango purée. Stir in the flour and baking powder, one third at a time. Add in the chopped mango and yogurt last, then place in a bread pan lined with parchment paper. Bake in the oven at 350° for 60-70 minutes, until the top is plenty browned and looks like it might burn (ie – more brown than mine, so the top doesn’t collapse). Take out and let cool. Best served slightly warm!

*u wot? You want me to add the baking soda to the mango? This is so that the mango acidity slows its roll so your bread doesn’t come out too strong or sour, but instead mellow and rich 😀

Enjoy, and happy Father’s Day!

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Speculoos Frosting

June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

This weekend I wanted to see how to make a filling or frosting out of speculoos that was less intense than the spread itself. The only way to do this more or less was with cupcakes…challenge accepted. Chocolate seemed most appropriate, and I had some chocolate chips from a photo shoot at work to use up (pics to come). I discovered that your typical frosting additions do not particularly help the spec-situation, and ended up with acceptably tasting, yet strangely textured speculoos “frosting”. I feel a civic duty as a self-proclaimed food blogger to share my culinary efforts, both successful and otherwise, to illustrate precisely what and what not to do in abnormal baking practices. So learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself 😀

First up: get your jar of speculoos into the bowl. This was almost the whole jar, but I used 1 cup. You’ll need an electric mixer or kitchen stand to get the spread whipped.

See the color change? Good! I should have stopped there and forgotten the rest but….NAH

Check out this gif! Gonna try to make this a thing, hopefully better. Not bad for a last-minute decision, though.

Cue heavy cream. Except don’t, because this will happen. As they say, don’t fix it if it ain’t broke! I think with just some powdered sugar and more mixing it would have been 👌. So don’t add heavy cream. Maybe don’t add sugar either because it’s all so sweet to begin with.

K moving right along…the cupcakes themselves were really great so we’ll get right to it. There was no cocoa powder in this recipe and just a half cup of chocolate chips. Melt with butter and you’re good to go.

Time for whisking! With a fancy pointy whisk that is much easier to wash than the normal round ones.

More whisking with the cute should-have-sifted-these-together-but-didn’t mini whisk

Mix it up

Add crushed raspberries

Check it out – before rubber scraper, after rubber scraper!

How cute. So moist and dark.

Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes with Speculoos Frosting
This is what I would recommend you to do. Everything described is how it went down, except for the frosting. If you have better luck with yours, leave a comment below and tell me about it!Makes 12 cupcakes

Cupcakes
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3 oz bittersweet chocolate (~1/2 cup chips)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 handful raspberries

Frosting
1 cup speculoos, or cookie butter from TJ’s

Directions
Melt the butter and chocolate together with a double boiler. You can also microwave them. Make sure you mix well if you do this. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt together. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together. Add these dry ingredients in increments to the egg mixture. Add the chocolate and butter in two rounds, still using a whisk. Mash up the raspberries; you can use a potato masher, a fork, or your hands. Just make sure to get all the juice.
Pour the batter into a muffin tin lined with paper, two thirds to three quarters of the way up. Place in the oven at 350° for 18 minutes.

For the frosting, put the speculoos in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, or large bowl, using an electric mixer. Mix on medium speed until the color has gotten much lighter and the speculoos is less dense. Add some powdered sugar if you dare. Once the cupcakes have cooled down, spread the frosting on the cupcakes and enjoy!

Grab some milk. You’ll need it.

Brown Butter Blondies (w/ friends)

June 7, 2015December 31, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

To the best of my knowledge, blondies are just brownies without the chocolate. So wouldn’t that make them cookie bars, especially if you add chocolate chips? I vote yes. There’s nothing wrong with a nice dense cookie square. And like most things in life, these are much improved with brown butter! Always a good life choice. This week I had some little helpers, one of whose fingers you can see going for the goods. Needless to say I had lots of help mostly eating these blondies (which passed with flying colors). Brown Butter Blondies Adapted from Phyllis Grant Makes 12 blondies Ingredients 1 cup unsalted butter 1 1/2 cups brown sugar 3 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 eggs 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips Melt the butter on the stove in a light colored saucepan. Keep stirring until the spitting has stopped and the little bits floating about go brown. Transfer the now brown butter to a bowl and let cool completely. Once the brown butter has cooled, move it to a large mixing bowl and combine with the brown sugar. Add the vanilla and eggs until well incorporated. Add half the flour and the salt, mixing until just combined. To avoid over mixing, add the chocolate chips next. Lastly mix in the rest of the flour. Put the batter into an 8×8 pan lined with parchment paper or aluminum foil, and smooth out with a wooden spoon or spatula. Place in the oven at 350° F for 30-35 minutes, or until there’s no jiggling when you move the pan die to side. The time it’s in should vary depending on your preference of done-ness. I went with 40 minutes and it was done, but not burnt. Just remember to let it cool completely! Yes, this may take over an hour!

Confession: I didn’t wait an hour to cut out the blondies. But I think it made it easier to pull them apart later. They’ll get a lot harder once they’ve cooled. If after a couple of days they’re too hard, throw one in the microwave for 30 seconds at half power. Even better with ice cream!

Don’t worry, they’re worth the wait.

White (Chocolate) Drizzled Lavender Shortbread

April 23, 2015December 31, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

My friend Rebecca requested a baked good for her recital reception that included lavender and white chocolate. Apparently, this is a fairly common combination. I still have a large amount of lavender from France in the pantry, so I was eager to find a winning recipe. But after much searching, I concluded that the best/least messy/most portable way to go was with shortbread. I made lavender shortbread before, for Christmas, but I wasn’t perfectly satisfied with the recipe…well there’s no time like the present for fixing!

Butter + sugar

+ lavender + salt

+flour

+ heat

I made them very cute-sized so many people could try at the reception, and drizzled Ghirardelli “Classic White Chips” over them. Nope, no chocolate! Don’t get it twisted though: to be classified as white chocolate, a confection must contain at least 20% cocoa butter. I guess Ghirardelli didn’t even bother with that, just sugar, oil, milk, soy, and vanilla. Interesting…enjoy to your liking!

White Chocolate Drizzled Lavender Shortbread
Makes 30 medium cookies

1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cooking lavender, ground
2 cups flour
1 cup white chocolate chips

Combine butter and sugar with an electric mixer and set aside. Use a mortar and pestle or food processor to grind up the dried lavender. Add this with the salt to the butter and sugar. Gradually mix in the flour.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough to around 1/4 inch in thickness and press out cookies with a cookie/biscuit cutter of your preferred size. Roll up leftover dough and repeat. Place on baking sheets and bake at 350° for 15-20 minutes, or until edges are slightly browned.

At half power, microwave the chips in a bowl in 30 second intervals. When fully melted, place in a sandwich bag with a corner cut out. Drizzle quickly over lined-up shortbread ~ this may take a few tries but you’ll get the hang of it! The chocolate (or white) will make it on somehow.

Molten Chocolate Cake: Recipe Video!

April 4, 2015December 31, 2015 CarmenLeave a comment

Video Here

Hey all! My friend Iris and I made our first recipe video on Molten Chocolate Cake, and it’s pretty fun! Go check it out! Hopefully this is the first of many, but we’re still learning so feel free to leave a comment here or Vimeo with feedback! Here’s the recipe from Food and Wine

Molten Chocolate Cake
Makes 4 6-ounce cakes

Ingredients
1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, preferably Valrhona
2 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 450°. Butter and lightly flour four 6-ounce ramekins. Tap out the excess flour. Set the ramekins on a baking sheet.

In a double boiler, over simmering water, melt the butter with the chocolate. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs with the egg yolks, sugar and salt at high speed until thickened and pale.

Whisk the chocolate until smooth. Quickly fold it into the egg mixture along with the flour. Spoon the batter into the prepared ramekins and bake for 12 minutes, or until the sides of the cakes are firm but the centers are soft. Let the cakes cool in the ramekins for 1 minute, then cover each with an inverted dessert plate. Carefully turn each one over, let stand for 10 seconds and then unmold. Serve immediately.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

March 26, 2015December 31, 2015 Carmen1 Comment

Let’s get right to it: these things are gluten-free AND vegan! But these cookies aren’t GF and V to be accommodating; they’re really just good cookies disguised as healthy. Who said you need anything more than peanut butter and sugar in a good cookie, anyway?

I was watching Unique Sweets (explanation of the show here) and they were showing the process for a bakery’s flourless peanut butter cookies, so naturally I tried to make some myself. They came out pretty great.

There are only four things in these cookies, if you count water: peanut butter, powdered sugar, and a flax egg, made from flaxseed meal and water. Make sure you sift the sugar so you don’t have to deal with squashing tiny lumps later.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Makes 12 3-inch cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup confectioner’s sugar, sifted
1 flax egg (1 tablespoon + 3 tablespoons water)
Optional: coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Combine the peanut butter and sugar in a bowl. Add the flax egg and mix until smooth. To make the dough easier to handle, you can chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Scoop out dough to form balls of desired size and flatten with hands. Use a large fork to make cool patterns, so people know they’re peanut butter cookies. Bake at 350° for 9 minutes, or until edges look crispy.

Evidently, you don’t have a real peanut butter cookie in your hands unless it has those fork marks. And if there’s a cookie with fork marks in your hands, it must be a peanut butter cookie.
Potential variations include covering the dough in granulated sugar before baking, and using brown sugar in the dough. Hooray for peanut butter!

Lemon Zucchini Bread

February 13, 2015December 31, 2015 Carmen1 Comment

On Tuesday, I made some zucchini bread, and there’s half a slice left on the kitchen counter.

I know zucchinis are not in season, but I really wanted to try out a classic recipe on my own and see what happened. The first time I heard about zucchini bread, I was very skeptical. VERY skeptical. I was unaware of the concept of a vegetable being used to make a sweet bread. But boy, am I glad I gave it a try! If you’re having your doubts about such a beast because of your past dread of sliced squishy, oily zucchini on your dinner plate, prepare to have your mind blown with this incredible loaf of dense, flavorful, and extremely moist quick bread! Plain old zucchini bread would have been great, but there’s nothing like a good old kick of lemon to make your life a little happier. Trust me – you’ll want to stay with the portion size on this one (two loaves!).

It’s such an easy thing to make! Wet ingredients, sugar, dry ingredients, zucchini, oven.

See for yourself when the first turns to the second in an hour.

Lemon Zucchini Bread

Adapted from Sunset Breads

Makes two loaves

Ingredients

3 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil or melted butter

2 eggs

Zest of one lemon

Two large zucchinis (about 1 pound)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together sugar, oil, eggs, and lemon zest in a large bowl until combined. Gradually add the flour, salt, and baking powder. When well incorporated, grate the zucchinis into the bowl and mix occasionally until all the zucchini has been added.

Pour the batter into two greased and floured 4×8 inch loaf pans. Bake loaves for about an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool in pans, then carefully flip onto cooling racks to let cool completely.

Look at that texture.

The zucchini just does something wonderful where it distributes all

of its magical zu-juice throughout the bread to make it superbly moist.

No chocolate necessary for this thing!

The Rubber Scraper Movement

Eating and baking my way into the food media world, one crumbless bowl at a time

Category: baking