Getting Baked!

I have a new cookbook! I'm sure you've seen it around...

Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. You know...they own that little bakery up in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The first thing I made were these yummy Peanut Butter Crispy Bars. Let me just say "Oh my!"

These bars were a little bit of heaven in each bite...chocolate, peanut butter, crunchy, soft...wow.

The notes on the page in the cookbook mention that these are extremely rich and should be served in small portions...and they aren't joking. The only drawback is that these morsels need to stay refrigerated so they are hard to bring...to say...a girls' night out at a bar someone owns...they got a little soft an mushy. Still ate 'em though!

I am going to make every single recipe in this book....is there a group I can join? :) I'll keep you posted.

TWD: Caramel Crunch Bars

This weeks TWD was chosen by Whitney over at What's Left on the Table? She chose Caramel Crunch Bars which seems to be a grown up candy bar. A shortbread crust with espresso powder, cinnamon and bittersweet chocolate mixed in, topped by a thin layer of even more bittersweet chocolate and then finished off with bits of toffee! Wowzy!

A lot of bakers mentioned they had a hard time finding the toffee bits but my local Walmart has them year round...I picked up a package when I was there yesterday (don't even think about stopping into Walmart on the weekend!) and baked up a batch today. I think I might use the rest of the toffee bits in some blondies....hmmm. These dangerous bars will be wrapped up and taken to Bunco at a friend's house Thursday night. (Haven't played Bunco yet but there will be food and drink there so it can't be all bad, right?)

The only substitution I made was replacing the light brown sugar in the shortbread base with dark brown as that was all I had in the pantry.

Have a look over here to see what the rest of the bakers made....

Oh yeah...Twilight comes out on DVD 03/21/09! I CAN'T WAIT! :)

TWD: Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread

This week Heather over at A Sherry Trifle chose Fresh Ginger and Chocolate Gingerbread for us bakers to make. Pretty straightforward and easy to produce it was warm, spicy, chocolaty and gingery.

I had a 9" pan sitting in my cupboard so I made the whole recipe with no problems...my pan however was a stoneware pan from Pampered Chef. The edges and the bottom of the cake got really done while the middle was just cooked through. No biggie, I just cut 1/2" from each side and ate those bits myself. A little burnt but still yummy.

The fresh ginger was easy to chop up with my new Santoku knife!! Added to the sugar it made a nice little syrup in itself. I used bittersweet chocolate chips so I didn't have to chop any chocolate up and I used candied ginger from Trader Joe's in place of the stem ginger. (I didn't even look for that in the store) Oh yeah, I used duck eggs...man do those things have tough shells!

I waited a day to try this yummy cake (except for the edges I cut) ...and I am glad I did. The flavors blended and mellowed I think. I especially like the addition of chocolate, both in the cake and the frosting. Now, I just need to give 3/4 of it away so I don't eat it all myself!

I will post a photograph tomorrow as we were skiing all day today and there wasn't enough light outside when we got home to photograph the cake.

Don't forget to check here for all the other lovely cakes!

Happy Happy New Year!!

My first blog entry of 2009! Wow...has a year really gone by?? It's hard for me to believe it yet here it is!!

Ok, ok....everyone had such very nice comments about my last TWD entry...remember the Tall and Creamy Eggnog Cheesecake? The one I didn't like...then let it sit overnight again...then liked it but not enough to eat it? Well...I transformed it! And I like it much better now that it is covered in dark chocolate! (Really, who wouldn't?)


I started out scooping with my 1/4 cup disher...because that is the only size I have...and I just scooped the cake...crust and all...into balls. They are a little bigger than I would have wanted but I wasn't being picky.


I didn't have any sticks so I put the balls into the fridge and went to get sticks from Michaels. On the way there my car blew a radiator hose! I pulled into the parking lot of Safeway with my 7 year old and steam pouring out from under the hood. You see, at this point I didn't know it was the hose...I just saw "smoke". I called the husband and he asked if it was smoke or steam coming out...uhhh, what would be the difference? Well, apparently, smoke is more opaque and steam just kind of mists out....whatever....after I hung up on him, he came to my rescue. After replacing the hose, picking up my 4 year old from preschool and finally getting home at 5pm, I was able to stick the sticks in the balls and put them in the freezer, for 15 minutes! I still had to dip and roll before heading to the New Year's Eve Party!!!


I melted a pound of dark chocolate (Trader Joe's) with 2 tablespoons of butter in a double boiler. Dipped the not yet frozen, too big cheesecake balls into the melted chocolate (ending up with some misshapen oblong balls). My boys helped me by sprinkling graham cracker crumbs and red and green sprinkles on top. I put them back in the freezer for 7 minutes, wrapped those suckers up and took off to the party where they were very much enjoyed by all! And best of all...THE CHEESECAKE IS NOT IN MY FRIDGE ANYMORE!!!

Rugelach!

My first TWD:


One of my first memories of rugelach is my grandma Anderson rolling up the bits of her pie crust after making a pie. She would spread the bits with some butter and sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar and roll them up crescent style. Now, technically that wasn't really rugelach...but it was the same idea. Fast forward 15 years later to Santa Barbara, CA and my college days. Downtown there was a gourmet deli, Pierre LaFond, that had jars and jars of different flavored Rugelach on their counter. The real deal. The hardest part was choosing which flavor to try..but hey, there was always tomorrow and another flavor.
For this TWD recipe, we have Grace to thank for choosing Rugelach. Click on over to her site for a complete recipe and don't forget to check out the TWD site for all the other bakers.
This recipe was fairly easy...and not too complicated...and I am not one to roll things out. The only hard part was waiting for the dough to chill and then waiting again for the little crescents to chill before going into the oven.
I did change some things in the recipe. For one half of the dough, I spread some homemade fig jam that I had lingering in the fridge along with the cinnamon and sugar mixture and some chopped pecans. On the second half, I used orange marmalade and mini chocolate chips. I didn't use the cinnamon sugar mixture because I thought it might taste weird with the marmalade. I did sprinkle the tops of both with sugar.
The results...I preferred the orange marmalade/chocolate mixture. The sour slightly bitter flavor along with the chocolate was great. The fig/cinnamon/pecan mixture was pretty sweet though that is the one the kids prefer....which is fine with me...I'll just eat the other!


On another subject:
How exciting is that? I actually took that picture a couple of days ago...Whole Foods opens tomorrow at 10:00am!!!