Scrumptious Sweets

November 17, 2018–So a few weeks before my Women’s World Cup planning session, yes, it’s a thing; I saw an episode of Valerie’s Home Cooking on the Food Network. She was making Crunchy Manchego Fig Straws. I didn’t have manchego cheese or fig jam, but I did have cheddar cheese and some homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam that one of my co-workers had made.

Not only is the recipe is pretty straight forward you should have all of these ingredients in your pantry/refrigerator. You thaw and roll out a sheet of puff pastry.

After that you simply spread your favorite jam on top, leaving some room on the edges.

Sprinkle about 1 cup of your cheese pairing on top of the jam.

Put the other half of the dough on top and press down lightly to seal in the cheese and the jam.

With a pizza cutter, sharp knife, bench scrapper, etc. cut the dough into 1/2-inch strips.

Twist each strip a few times then pinch the ends together to seal. Place the twists on prepared baking sheets, brush with egg wash, sprinkle with some more of the cheese, then bake at 400 degrees until golden brown (12-15 minutes).

Serve immediately or store in an airtight container for 1-day.

October 28, 2018–Fall was definitely upon us.  Leaves were starting to change colors and the weather was getting colder everyday.  On my daily commute from work I would pass by a pumpkin patch.  I hadn’t made anything with pumpkin in a while so I decided to make some Pumpkin Bars from the ATK The perfect cookie cookbook.

Mise en place…check!

The recipe only called for ground ginger but I still had a pretty large piece from the Carrot Ginger Soup I made earlier in the week so I figured I would add some to the graham cracker cookie base.After it baked I then topped it with the cream cheese/pumpkin mixture and let that cooked until it was set.

I let the whole thing cool over night then cut them into linger fingers of goodness.

 

October 7, 2018–So my friends Brad, Elizabeth, and Stacy came to town for the Army 10-miler. It is always great to see them especially since we visited some of our old haunts (Table Top, Sugar Shack, The Royal Restaurant, etc).  Stacy surprised me with some North Carolina pecans so I decided to make something with them.  Grabbing the foolproof ATK The perfect cookie cookbook I came across a recipe for Turtle Brownies.

Not only did I put toasted, chopped pecans inside of the brownie batter but I also added white and dark chocolate chips.After the brownies cooled I made a whiskey caramel sauce to put on top!

It was so smooth that it looked like glass.  Yum!

You can see that these are very rich so I cut them into bite-sized portions. 

To take the brownies to yet another level I then added a pecan to the top of each one.

Little packages of chocolate and nut heaven!

 

June 10, 2018–So in my post Last Call I stated that it was probably my last baking experience in Miami.  That statement did not go over well with the people that work in my office.  I explained to them that I had packed up the majority of my kitchen so had no tools.  We went round and round until they finally gave up.  That is until a new wrinkle was introduced by AC and her staff.  They had the nerve, dare I say, the audacity to state that the cookies from Last Call were store bought.  They made statements like, “…but they’re too perfect…” and “they taste too good” to be hand made.  I know they were only saying these things to get me to bake again so I ignored their ‘bullying’.  At least I thought I did.  All week and during the weekend all I could think about is how they were doubting my talents.  On Saturday I begin to look through all of my cookie recipes to see if I had any that could be made sans tools.  Although I found a few none of them interested me enough to want to bake.  Alas, I had to pull out my stand mixer.

As Proof that I actually made these cookies I provided the naysayers photos that included my hands and face in the production process.  I’ll spare you those photos but will include some of the prep photos just in case there are any naysayers out there!

In keeping with my something dark and something light them I decided to make the Molasses Spice and Lemon Sour Cream Cookies from the ATK book.  Of course they were both a hit!  But now that they know I have unpacked the mixer and that I’m not going anywhere for the last 3 weekends that I’m in Miami they expect goodies.  We’ll see if I get the motivation.

MOLASSES SPICE COOKIES with DARK RUM GLAZE

I mainly picked these cookies because I had all of the ingredients and it allowed me to get rid of the bottle of molasses I bought a while ago.  Along with the molasses these cookies contain brown sugar, cinnamon and ground ginger, cloves, & allspice (ATK says these spices help balance the sweetness of the molasses and sugar).  Since my theme has been to use as much of the open goods I have before packing I also added some rum to the batter and made a rum glaze to go on top.  I will continue this theme for the next set of cookies 🙂

LEMON SOUR CREAM COOKIES with LIMONCELLO GLAZE 

Although these were very good I didn’t completely follow my theme of alcohol.  The basic recipe only called for lemon zest in the batter and the lemon juice to be used in the glaze.  I should have put lemon juice AND limoncello in the batter so that the cookies would have had a more pronounce lemon flavor.  The recipe called for 8 ounces of sour cream to add moisture, tenderness, and richness to the cookie.  The dough was also very thick, looked like stiff mashed potatoes, and had to be refrigerated for an hour.

 

 

June 3, 2018–Last Call…but not for alcohol.  As I continue to pack up my house for the pending move I’ve tried to use up as much of my baking goods as possible while also continuing to make cookies from America’s Test Kitchen cookie cook book.  I’m pretty confident that this will be the last thing I bake in Florida and will probably not cook/bake anything until I get settled in the D.C. area.  I know those of you in the MDV are ecstatic because now you will be able to TASTE the food that you see on the blog.  The first cookie is your traditional sugar cookie.  ATK calls it a Chewy Sugar Cookie.  To reduce the sweetness they added cream cheese which also gave it a slight tang.  The dough was very soft which made it difficult to handle.  After rolling the dough in sugar they were pressed flat then sprinkled with more sugar.  My brother stopped by and ate two of them so I can assume that they are good 🙂

The second cookie is a Chocolate Crinkle Cookie.  These cookies have unsweetened chocolate and espresso powder.  To create more crinkles the recipe called for me to roll the very wet dough in granulated sugar before rolling in powder sugar.    As described in the book, as the coarse sugar crystals absorb moisture some of it dissolves in a syrup.  This moisture evaporates as the cookies bake causing the sugar to recrystallize causing a “faster drying surface that is more prone to cracking.”

April 28, 2018–I am in San Antonio attending the French Cooking and Art and Science of Cooking Boot Camps at the CIA.  When I was here last year I attended four different Boot Camps; two of which were centered around Baking and Bread.  We made A LOT of sweets–too much for our small class to eat so I will bring them home and conduct ‘reverse halloween’.  I would go from door to door and pass out cookies, cakes, pies, various loaves of bread, etc.  One of the neighbors asked me daily for over two weeks when I was going to bring her some oatmeal raisin cookies.  Good, bad, or indifferent, this is one cookie we did not make.

When I saw this neighbor earlier this week the first question out of her mouth was, “¿Cuándo vas a hacer mis galletas de avena con pasas?”

To add more pressure the friend I’m staying with, YMDT, requested that I pay my first weeks room and board with oatmeal CHOCOLATE CHIP cookies.  Notice the difference?  Like me she doesn’t like raisin’s in her desserts so I had to make TWO separate types of oatmeal cookies!  As luck would have it, I recently watched an episode of America’s Test Kitchen where they made Classic Chewy Oatmeal Cookies.  I’m sure these cookies are in the book I used to make the Butterscotch Meringue Bars and Millionaire’s Shortbread Cookies but since I didn’t have the book with me I did a quick search on the internet.

Once again, no special equipment required–BONUS!  Flour, salt, baking soda, melted brown butter, cinnamon, white and brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, and old fashioned rolled oats.  Of course I had to add raisins and chocolate chips or in my case since I wasn’t paying attention I bought dark chocolate morsels 🙂

Pre-bake cookies:Post baked:Ready to eat!!

 

April 25, 2018–Day 3 of my French Boot Camp class at the CIA I was tasked with making a Tarte Tatin (Apple Tart).  It starts with a Pâte Brisée (basic pie crust).In a cast iron skillet I made a quick caramel from sugar then added butter.  Once the butter and caramel was combined I placed thinly sliced Granny Smith apples in layers; separating each layer with sugar and dabs of butter.  I should have made a nice design on the first layer because once the tartin is flipped from the skillet this is what you will see.  This is them baked for 20-25 minutes.  After the initial baking it is then topped with the Pâte Brisée and baked for another 20-30 minutes.After allowing it to cool the whole thing is flipped out and can be enjoyed with your favorite ice cream, creme anglaise, whipped cream, or just off of a spoon!

April 15, 2018–As promised in my Butterscotch Meringue Bars post I decided to make some more cookies from the America’s Test Kitchen cookie cook book.  This time I made their Millionaire’s Shortbread Cookies.  It is a shortbread cookie topped with a chewy caramel filling then topped with chocolate.  The ‘quick’ shortbread was made from flour, melted butter, salt and sugar so I didn’t need to use my stand mixer.  The best of all worlds!  Who could say no to this?  First I prepared my pan with a foil sleeve.  Yeah, I know, not perfect but it worked.I wanted to butter the foil before putting in the dough but forgot.  The directions didn’t tell you to butter the foil and I think it is because the butter in the batter along with the foil was enough to ensure that it would easily release, which it did.

Next came the caramel which was made with sweetened condensed milk, brown sugar, heavy cream, corn syrup, butter and salt.  Of course whenever I make caramel I HAVE to add some type of liquor to it :-).  I had some Johnnie Walker Black laying around so I added a few teaspoons to the finished caramel–didn’t want to burn off the alcohol or the flavor!The topping called for bittersweet chocolate but I did a mixture of bittersweet, dark, and milk.  This gave the chocolate a deeper, complex flavor.Once I cut into it you could see the levels of goodness and before even taking a bite know that chocolate would have a nice snap when you bit into the cookie.

 

March 18, 2018–I have A LOT of cookbooks.  Although I know in the internet age I can find most recipes online it is just something about holding a book in my hand while reading the recipes and looking at the amazing pictures that causes me to continue to purchase cookbooks.  One of my recent purchases is THE perfect cookie–YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO FOOLPROOF cookies, brownies, & bars from America’s Test Kitchen.  There are a lot of great recipes that I look forward to baking and sharing in the coming years.  The first thing I made was their Butterscotch Meringue Bars.  It starts with an ultra chewy brown sugar blondie base that is topped with chocolate chips then covered with a sweet brown sugar meringue.

Of course I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I added a drop or two of WL Weller Special Reserve to the blondie base before spreading it in the bottom of a 13 x 9 pan.You could honestly just eat the dough with a spoon, unbaked but where would be the fun in that?

I then added the semi-sweet chocolate chips.  The next time I will probably add a variety of chips to add to the complexity of flavors.I knew the chocolate would melt so there would be little texture so I decided to add some toasted pecans.I then covered the entire thing with a brown sugar meringue that I added a few more drops of WL Weller Special Reserve to 🙂Although it was only 30 minutes in the oven it had to cool for 2 hours before I could cut it!!!!  It was worth the wait!  Especially with a ice cold glass of milk.Stay tuned for more from this cookbook…