Easier Than Falling Off a Log
Archive for dessert
September 6, 2010 at 11:28 pm · Filed under dessert, food
I’m not sure what category of frozen dessert this falls under, because there is yogurt in it, obviously, but apparently it follows the rules governing sorbets, too? I don’t really know. All I do know is that a) it freezes really solid, and b) it’s delicious and a fabulous colour (which doesn’t really come through as well as it could in my sub-par photo). Plus, it doesn’t have that whole thing of custard-making and tempering and whatnot. It’s pretty much ready to go as long as you have an ice cream maker.
This is another recipe whose provenance I don’t remember! I think I’ve been digging into the older reaches of my recipe files lately, back before I had a foodblog and didn’t have to care about attribution. I do know that the original said to use whatever berries tickled your fancy, so I went crazy at the store and got strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, AND blackberries. I wound up kind of overbuying on berries, but is there really such a thing as overbuying berries? I used as much as I needed in the ice cream, and just ate the rest over the next few days. Summer.
Berry Frozen Yogurt Sorbet Whatever
Ingredients
4 – 5 cups mixed berries, whatever kinds you like (I definitely erred on the side of MORE BERRIES! and so should you; in fact, it’s not a bad motto for life)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
6 oz container plain yogurt
Method
Put all the ingredients except the yogurt in a pot and stir well, bashing at the berries a little.
Bring it to a boil.
Turn it down to a simmer and let it go for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up berries (although this will be happening on its own as well).
Take it off the heat and leave to cool for 15 minutes.
When it’s reasonably cool, dump the mixture into a sieve over a ceramic or glass bowl and press it through with a potato masher (what?).
Stir in the yogurt.
Sling the bowl into the fridge overnight or at least for several hours, until thoroughly cold.
Freeze according to your ice cream maker’s directions.
Bear in mind that since this freezes particularly hard, you’ll probably want to take it out of the freezer a little in advance of when you intend to eat it, just so that you can scoop it rather than chip off shards of it. Mmm… shards.
August 6, 2010 at 11:05 pm · Filed under dessert, food
So I got an ice-cream-maker attachment for my KitchenAid for Christmas. As you might imagine, using it wasn’t really on my mind for a good while. But then summer happened, and it happened in a big way. So I fired the thing up, and you wouldn’t believe it (or maybe you would, but I just expect things – especially when wielded by me – to fail) but it was perfect. Perfect! The consistency was exactly like ice cream, which sounds like a stupid syllogism because, uh, it was ice cream, what else is it supposed to be like, but I can ruin things really well! And when it involves something fussy like tempering egg yolks… I mean, the odds of failure were very high. So to have it not only work, but succeed marvelously? I don’t know if it’s my ice cream maker attachment or me or just a good luck day, but whatever it was, it struck gold this time.
So first of all it’s chocolate. And the original used milk chocolate, which I am extremely not against despite heavy food snob pressure otherwise (I suspect it’s due to trying to make their own indulgences “good for them,” while other people, you know, food plebs, just eat chocolate because they like it and can’t think beyond their taste buds – this may sound harsh but read a fancy food blog sometime! You wouldn’t believe what comes out of some people!), but I had some bittersweet chocolate hanging around and made up the balance of the amount I needed with Somerville’s own Taza Chocolate. And then the stout used was Murphy’s, obviously, because that is how we roll. And it was dark and interesting and silky and delicious. Oh… and I also just went with heavy cream throughout instead of using some in one part and using milk in another part. It wasn’t because I’m a full-fat crusader or anything, I use regular 1% in recipes all the time where it calls for whole milk or 2%, but the two behaviours stem from the same root, and that’s frugality. I’m not going to buy a whole different kind of milk just for a recipe! And I’m also not going to buy a little carton of cream and use exactly half of it when the amount of milk or milk product required by the recipe would use up the rest of it. I bought it, I’m going to use it! I’m especially not going to buy two different milk-type-things neither of which I use regularly and neither of which I will use up.
Dark Chocolate Stout Ice Cream
Ingredients
7 oz dark, bittersweet, or unsweetened chocolate, chopped
2 cups heavy cream, divided
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup stout – if, like my husband, you think Murphy’s already tastes like a milkshake, then the choice of which brand to use is clear
1 tsp vanilla
Method
Put your chocolate pieces in a bowl with a strainer on top of it.
Mix 1 cup of the cream, the sugar, and the salt in a pot until hot and steamy (I did this over medium heat).
While that’s heating, whisk the egg yolks in a separate bowl – a nice big one, you’re going to pour the cream mixture into it in a minute.
Ok, so when the cream mixture is steaming, start pouring it into the yolks, gradually, whisking the entire time. If you think this may require an extra hand, you may be right.
Once it’s all combined, dump it back into the pot and put it back on the heat, stirring constantly with a spatula until the mixture thickens enough to coat it.
Now pour it through the strainer onto the chocolate.
Stir until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth.
Whisk in the other cup of cream, then the stout and vanilla.
Plop the bowl into an ice bath and stir until cool.
Put the bowl into the fridge (I covered mine with plastic wrap) overnight.
Then, freeze it in your ice cream machine per its instructions.
This was supposed to have a soft-serve consistency because of the alcohol, but I found that it had a normal hard ice cream consistency – creamy, not rock-solid, but not soft-serve by a long shot. Maybe it’s because of all the heavy cream I used? Anyway, this is delicious, and dark chocolate pairs so well with dark beer.
June 28, 2010 at 10:51 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Made these to bring to the picnic that wasn’t, along with the potato salad. I’ve never made a flourless cookie before; I made these out of curiosity, not necessity. Matt said that they were really light, and they were. They felt like they would have floated on water. I don’t know that I’m necessarily going to make them again, though, because the texture was a little unusual – not bad or wrong, just… not quite cookie-like in some way. Maybe I’d get used to it if I ate flourless cookies more often.
They’re from The Little Red House. Hers look more substantial than mine. Mine spread out like you wouldn’t believe (see the picture at the end for proof!) and ended up quite thin. Maybe I did something wrong. It’s possible I forgot something. As I type up this recipe, I’ll keep a weather eye out for anything that doesn’t match up.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients
1 cup peanut butter – I used smooth, but I don’t see how chunky could hurt
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup oats
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Method
Preheat oven to 350.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together peanut butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
Mix in eggs until fully combined.
Add oats and baking soda and again mix until fully combined – that’s the beauty of a flourless baked good; you don’t have to worry about overmixing!
Stir in chocolate chips.
Arrange scoops of dough on a parchment- or silpat-lined baking sheet (not that it really matters how you arrange them, they’ll just end up covering the whole thing in the end).
Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
See?
June 20, 2010 at 10:23 pm · Filed under dessert, food
This is the other thing I brought to the barbeque to which I also brought the cucumber salad. I only got to have one, and I really, really wish I’d gotten to have more. I called them Snickers cookies because they have the same bunch of flavours as a Snickers – they aren’t those cookies with mini Snickerses in them. They’ve got peanuts, chocolate, and caramel, in the forms of crunchy peanut butter and those little Dove caramels enrobed in chocolate. And tying it all together is cookie deliciousness. I want one right now, honestly.
I got the recipe from Babble, where it is not called “Snickers Cookies.” They also did not use crunchy peanut butter, and they did not need to use the pastry flour trick because I guess they had real pastry flour hanging around. They also made a point of flattening their cookies down. I did not, and mine probably had a smaller diameter, but they looked bigger because they had more height. I didn’t want to smush them down because I didn’t want to rupture the chocolate holding the caramel! To be honest, this was happening a little bit without my help… a couple of cookies had caramel oozing out the sides.
Snickers Cookies
Ingredients
3/4 cup crunchy peanut butter
4 tbsp butter, room temperature
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
either 1 2/3 cups whole wheat pastry flour, OR if you don’t have pastry flour, you can make it by replacing 1 tbsp of flour per 1/2 cup with 1 tbsp of corn starch and sifting the two together. In this case, that’s 3 and a bit tbsp flour replaced with 3 and a bit tbsp corn starch. You may recognize this as the cake flour trick. Same deal.
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Dove Caramel Promises, get a whole bag, you won’t use them all but I can’t tell you how many you’ll need
Method
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and peanut butter.
Add honey and brown sugar and continue to cream until light and smooth.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating until fully combined before adding the next egg.
Once you’re all set with the eggs, mix in the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour (including the corn starch, if you’re doing the let’s-make-this-into-pastry-flour trick), salt, and baking powder.
Slowly mix into the peanut butter mixture until just combined.
Chuck the whole bowl into the fridge for 20 minutes (the fact that the bowls of stand mixers are metal will work in your favour here, as it will chill the dough faster).
After 20 minutes, take it out and get a baking sheet lined with parchment or a Silpat or something, and start assembling the cookies: take one scoop of dough, put it on the sheet, put one of the chocolates on it, cover with another scoop of dough, and press the sides together to hide the caramel completely. Do this until you run out of dough.
Now throw it back into the fridge for another 20 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350 while the cookies hang out in the fridge.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until the edges just begin to brown.
So I’ve had this post ready to roll for about 2 weeks now, except that I couldn’t get into my site’s control panel (first because it stopped accepting my password, and then the file for the control panel was magically missing), so I couldn’t upload the photo. But now I finally can! Hooray!
And speaking of photos, I’d have really liked to have gotten a picture of a cookie with a bite taken out of it, to prove that these aren’t just thick and lumpy peanut butter cookies, and that there really are chocolate caramels in the middle, but I didn’t take my camera to the barbeque.
May 8, 2010 at 11:26 pm · Filed under dessert, food
I didn’t make this cake for any reason, other than that I had a lot of eggs to use up – we usually buy the 6-pack, but at the drugstore, which was the only place we could get to at the time, they only had the big 12-packs. In styrofoam. Sigh. Anyway, I figured that since it wasn’t cake o’clock for any particular reason, but since I hadn’t brought anything in to work in a while, I could take one layer in, and keep one layer here at home. A novel solution if I do say so myself.
I got this recipe from Spache the Spatula, but I changed the icing (I know, that’s weird because that’s the part she raved about the most). I just get really nervous when there’s that many sticks of butter in a thing. But to make it, you stir a bunch of ingredients together in a pot on the stove, and when I was done that step, it looked like it would spread pretty well already, and it tasted good, so I decided to just stop there and use it as it was. That’s right – this icing didn’t have any butter in it whatsoever. And you know, it might not be to everyone’s taste, but it reminded me of some that my grandma used to make, and those are the magic words with recipes.
I also don’t have cake flour on hand ever, but I do have a trick (that I may have mentioned before… not sure) to turn regular all-purpose flour into cake flour. What you do is that you take out 2 tablespoons of the flour per cup, and replace it with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, and whisk them together really really well. Donezo! Cake flour.
Chocolate-Peanut Butter Marble Cake
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups cake flour, OR 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour with 4 1/2 tbsp flour removed and 4 1/2 tbsp corn starch whisked in
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature (and to be honest the temperature of our apartment was pretty high that day, so my butter was about 5 minutes away from being called “softened”)
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
2/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Grease and flour a pair of cake pans.
Whisk together the flour situation (either store-bought cake flour, or MacGyver cake flour… oh yes, I can’t wait to see what searches pull up this site now), the salt, and the baking powder in a small bowl.
Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and both sugars for about 5 minutes.
Beat in the eggs and vanilla, until combined.
Turn down the mixer to low and add in the flour mixture and the milk, alternating a bit of one and then a bit of the other, and beginning and ending with the flour. I’m not sure why that’s important, or even if it is – I haven’t done experiments. If you do, tell me the outcome.
Scoop out half of the batter and put it in another bowl. Yes, this is one of those recipes that dirties every bowl in your house. Sorry.
To the half that’s still in the stand mixer’s bowl, add the peanut butter and beat until combined. Trust me that you want to do this with the stand mixture. Peanut butter’s sticky and tough; don’t waste your time with a wooden spoon.
Mix the melted chocolate into the other half.
Pour half of the peanut butter mixture into each pan. As well as dirtying a lot of bowls, this recipe involves a lot of division, which in my case means a lot of eyeballing and calling it good.
Pour half of the chocolate mixture into each pan.
Run a knife through the mixtures to swirl them.
Bake for 30 – 35 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool in the pans for 10 minutes.
Then, if you plan on icing them, turn them out onto a rack to cool completely.
Weird But Still Pretty Good Icing
Ingredients
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour (all-purpose is fine here, obviously)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
Method
In a small pot, whisk together all ingredients.
Bring to a boil, whisking constantly.
Keep this up for about 1 minute, being sure to whisk all the lumps out completely.
Let cool before applying to cake.
Now, the original post said it was way easier to slice if you kept it in the fridge, so I did that, but it got kind of dry. After the first day of that, I just kept it out on the counter and it was fine.
January 10, 2010 at 1:09 am · Filed under dessert, food
The third cookie I made for Christmas (which, yes, I realize was 3 weeks ago, I’ve got a bit of a backlog of posts to write) was these lovely little fluffy cardamom-flavoured nuggets. I think cardamom might be my favourite sweet spice – and I know it’s not only for sweet stuff, but in a sweet context, it’s a favourite. Pretty sure cumin is my favourite savoury spice, in case you’re wondering. Anyway, these little bites are small and fairly light in the mouth, and the icing has a deliciously prominent vanilla flavour, and it’s got sprinkles, so you can’t really go wrong. Well, unless you don’t want to buy ground cardamom. It is expensive. I’ll cop to that. But I had bought some to make something down at Matt’s mom’s house once, and I told her she could keep it, but she had given it back to me because she didn’t have much need for it. So I was fortunate enough to have some hanging around. The buttermilk is in both the cookies and the icing, but I didn’t find that the whole thing had any pronounced buttermilk flavour. Maybe it does. I can’t really tell.
I got this recipe from Sugarcrafter, but I had to guess on one point – she talked about adding the “buttermilk and flour mixture.” I had to assume she meant add the buttermilk, and also add the flour mixture, as opposed to adding a mixture that already included both flour and buttermilk. What I did worked, so either my interpretation was right, or it doesn’t matter. But you know what does matter? Commas!
Cardamom Buttermilk Cookies with Vanilla Icing
Ingredients
for the cookies
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter (one stick)
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp buttermilk (not separated, but there’s no more sensible way of describing the amount you need than that)
for the icing
2 cups icing sugar
3 tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
Method
for the cookies
Preheat the oven to 375.
Grease a cookie sheet.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat in the egg.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cardamom, baking soda, and salt.
Stir the buttermilk into the wet ingredients in the stand mixer bowl.
Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined.
Scoop tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the baking sheet.
Throw it in the oven for 10 – 12 minutes.
Let them cool completely on a rack before icing them.
for the icing
While the cookies are baking, or more likely while they’re cooling, make the icing.
Beat together all three ingredients until smooth.
Drizzle over the cookies.
Sprinkle with sprinkles!
January 7, 2010 at 1:14 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Here is the second of the three cookies I made for my Christmas presents and stocking stuffers and whatnot. Yes, it’s pumpkin. What? Let’s be honest, even if it was pumpkin season, I’d still be using canned pumpkin, so what’s the difference?
The recipe comes from Chocolate Chip Trips, and the only thing I really have to add to her recipe is a response to someone in the comments. They had complained that trying to “improve” a chocolate chip cookie by adding pumpkin was pointless and stupid. My response is that this isn’t supposed to improve a chocolate chip cookie by adding pumpkin, it’s improving a pumpkin cookie by adding chocolate chips!
Oh wait, no, I did make one alteration. The original recipe called for pastry flour. Pastry flour is similar to cake flour, more similar, at any rate, than either is to all-purpose flour. I don’t have either pastry flour or cake flour hanging around the house, but what I do have is a hot tip, from Joy the Baker, explaining how to magically turn all-purpose flour into cake flour. The secret is this: you replace 2 tbsp per cup of all-purpose flour with 2 tbsp of corn starch. Then you sift it together really well, it has to be really incorporated and not just mixed in, but that’s all there is to it! Boom, no need to buy two bags of flour.
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (left alone)
1/2 cup EITHER pastry/cake flour OR all-purpose flour with 1 tbsp taken out and replaced by 1 tbsp corn starch, then sifted together thoroughly (in fact, I whisked them since I don’t have a sifter, but if you’re thorough it shouldn’t matter)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
3 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp pumpkin
1/2 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used up the last of the dark chocolate chips left over from the chocolate coconut bars, and then made up the rest with semi-sweet)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Method
Preheat the oven to 325.
Grease a baking sheet – the original recipe said 2 baking sheets, but I think I only used one, and just had the cookies getting a little cozy on there. Do what you’ve got to do.
Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the egg and the sugars until smooth and light.
Reduce the speed and mix in the butter, pumpkin, and vanilla until fully blended.
Mix in the dry ingredients until incorporated.
Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts.
Scoop big old spoonfuls onto your baking sheet(s). The original recipe said 1/4 cup-size scoops, so seriously – go to town. They don’t spread out much; rather, they fluff up vertically, so no worries vis-a-vis the cookies melding into one giant… delicious… pumpkiny… hmm. I’m sorry, I got a bit distracted there.
Ahem. Anyway, chuck ‘em in the oven for 14 – 16 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Devour them with your face.
January 2, 2010 at 11:27 pm · Filed under dessert, food
I made 3 cookies this Christmas, and I put them in people’s stockings, in Matt’s grandfather’s present, and in a Secret Santa gift I sent out (ironically, to someone in a town we were right near in Connecticut). This was one of the three.
The recipe comes from Cookwoman Food (at least, that’s how I’m parsing it – I might be wrong, but this way makes sense, doesn’t it?), and it’s a lot like a 7-layer bar, except it has fewer layers, and more of them are chocolate. A chocolate base, then chocolate chips, walnuts, and coconut on top. So… a 4-layer bar, and half of the layers are chocolate. P.S., the chocolate base has chocolate chips in it, too. Does that count as a layer? Does that bump us up to 5 layers, and more than half of the layers being chocolate? 7-layer bars are always kind of sketchy with their definition of a layer, anyway, so you might as well count this in.
Chocolate Coconut Bars
Ingredients
for the base
1 1/8 cups flour
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 cup dark chocolate chips
for the topping
2 eggs
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Method
for the base
Preheat the oven to 350.
Combine all the base ingredients together.
Press into a baking pan; I used my 8 1/2×11 pan, but the original recipe, and normal people, used a 9×13.
Bake for 10 minutes, but leave the oven on when it’s done.
While it’s baking, make the topping, by which I mean mix together all the topping ingredients.
Spread the topping on the baked base layer.
Chuck it back in the oven for another 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean. Don’t be fooled if your knife goes through a chocolate chip and comes out gooey from that!
December 14, 2009 at 10:06 pm · Filed under dessert, food
Last week, Matt went out after work one day with all his work friends. I was actually just getting ready to make those mushrooms for myself, because all I knew was that he was working late, but then he called right as I was heating the oil in the pan – hadn’t cooked anything yet, just chopped – and said they were at the bar (I was going to provide a link to it, because it’s a pretty good bar, but the picture on their website makes it look like a horrible meathead frat bar, which it isn’t – at least not on weeknights – and also crowded, which, again, not on weeknights) and did I want to come meet them? Of course, my answer was “of course,” so I put everything away and ran out the door. Only to realize, as soon as I’d crossed the street, that I’d forgotten something, so I ran back in. Now, I don’t drive, and I don’t have a driver’s license or a Massachusetts liquor ID (non-driver’s ID card for booze purposes), so I have to tote my passport around when I’m going to do something that will require proof of age. It was in my pocket. When I went back in and pulled my keys out of my pocket to unlock the door, I must have knocked it out without noticing, because when I got to the bar and was carded – I’m 27 – I couldn’t find it. The bartender was cool about it – after all, I’ve got wrinkles and I’m not wearing sweatpants and Uggs – but I was a little nervous that it had fallen out at the bus stop. But when we got home that night, it was under the door with a note. Our neighbour across the hall had found it and returned it. What a nice guy! So, naturally, I baked brownies and delivered half the pan to his door with another note (seen above). That photo is kind of a lie, though – they weren’t stacked on a plate, they were puzzle-pieced into a tupperware. Which he returned immediately. Captain Considerate over here.
The recipe is from Une Gamine Dans la Cuisine – excellent name by the way – and hers involved a cinnamon icing that I opted not to make. Partly it was because I thought they’d be rich and delicious enough without it (they were), but also because I didn’t have the time. I was actually making the mushrooms that same night, so I wanted to get done with the brownies so I could move on to mushrooms. So if you want some cinnamon icing on them, which is probably ridiculously delicious, click that link and go find out all about it. Otherwise, here’s the just-the-brownie recipe. What did I change? Let’s see. Maybe just leaving off the icing and also using my 9×9 pan, which made them kind of taller, but that is not what I call a problem.
Mocha Spice Brownies
Ingredients
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1 1/2 tsp instant espresso powder
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup cocoa powder
2/3 cup butter, divided in half and melted (I melted the two halves in two separate bowls)
1/2 cup boiling water (or just very hot water – I didn’t boil mine, but our hot water out of the sink tap is ridiculously hot, so I just used that)
2 cups sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup dark chocolate chips (oh yes, these exist, happiness in my mouth)
Method
Preheat the oven to 350.
Line a brownie pan – whatever size you choose! – with tinfoil, and if it’s not the nonstick kind, maybe grease it. P.S., let the edges of the tinfoil come over the edges of the pan so you can take the brownies out easily later.
Whisk together the first 7 ingredients – flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, espresso powder, paprika, and salt.
In a large bowl, combine the cocoa powder and one of the things of melted butter.
Stir in the hot water until thickened.
Add the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and the other thing of butter and stir to combine.
Fold the bowl of dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, stirring no more than is necessary to get rid of all the signs of flour.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Pour into the pan.
Bake for 30 – 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Take them out with the tinfoil – easy pease! – and let cool. On a rack or whatever.
December 13, 2009 at 12:10 am · Filed under dessert, food, side dishes/appetizers
For that same party where I brought the failbuns, I also (mercifully) brought chocolate almonds. Mercifully, because then when people asked me what I brought, I could say “Chocolate almonds!” and not be lying. Although I’d rather have lied and said “nothing” than to have to own up to the buns. They’re made more or less to the recipe found here, although he’s a chef and I’m a schmo, and I just melted regular baking chocolate to dip them in, instead of tempering a bunch of couverture chocolate. My results were fine, contrary to what he says on his site (that not only will it not be glossy, which is moot since it’s covered with cocoa powder, but it’ll also flake off and come apart – this didn’t happen, and anyway this was not the kind of party where people care about these details).
There are actually 3 different kinds. Two chocolate ones – one that’s just rolled in cocoa powder and sugar, and one that’s dipped in chocolate and then rolled in the cocoa powder mixture – and one that’s rolled in ground cardamom. I didn’t get to try any of those. I didn’t see anyone eating any at the party, but that was probably because they were kind of hidden… and then at one point there was a jar of mayonnaise sitting on top of one of them. But I’m sure our friend got to enjoy them eventually, when everyone had left.
Chocolate Almonds
Ingredients
2 cups almonds
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch salt
a few squares of baking chocolate, melted, whatever sweetness level you like (I used 3 squares and it wasn’t enough for all of the almonds, but I don’t know how many more it would have taken… or you could do like me and just dip some of them)
3 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tbsp icing sugar
Method
Lightly toast the almonds – not too much, they’ll go back over the heat in a bit, just enough to get a little colour in the middle.
Put the sugar, water, salt, and vanilla in a pot and bring to a boil.
Allow to boil for 1 minute.
Add the almonds and stir until the liquid is almost completely gone.
Remove from the heat and keep stirring until a sandy coating forms on the almonds.
Put them back on the heat and keep stirring until this sandy coating starts to caramelize, but before it all gets completely caramelized. I don’t know if that’s a “don’t worry about it” thing or an “it’s not possible to caramelize them completely” thing, but either way, once the nuts start to go, you’re done.
Pour them out onto a swath of tinfoil – the nonstick kind is ideal – and let cool while you take care of the toppings.
If you’re going to coat them with the cocoa powder mixture, mix together the cocoa powder and icing sugar. Or you could use different spices.
If you want to dip them in the chocolate and then the powder, that’s cool, dunk them into the chocolate, then fish them out and drop them in the powder, then fish them out of that. The hardest part about this is the fishing out, honestly.
Otherwise, just roll them in the cocoa mixture and call it a day. Or, honestly, you don’t have to roll them in anything. They’re pretty good all by themselves.
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