March 4, 2018–Thank you Claudia Fleming.  When I saw this recipe for Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart in the March issue of bon appétit I knew I had to make it.  A chocolate crust filled with salted caramel (of course I put bourbon in mine) topped with a chocolate ganache then sprinkled with Maldon sea salt–I could not start fast enough.  To make matters even easier I had all of the ingredients in my pantry.

The dough is pretty straight forward and rolls out very easy.After firming up in the refrigerator it fits very nicely in a 10-inch tart pan.A 15 minute blind bake followed by 20 more minutes in the oven resulted in my house smelling amazing and a crust that you could eat by itself.While the crust was baking I whipped up the salted bourbon caramel filling.  I should have cooked it a little longer because when I cut into it it oozed all over the plate.Top this with the chocolate, wish I would have remembered that I had chocolate sauce that I picked up in San Francisco :-(.Sprinkle with some sea salt and you have a dessert that people are fighting over.I had some dough left over but not enough for another pie so I made some mini-ones.  These are perfect two-bite desserts!Mini Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart vs Full-sized Salted Caramel Chocolate Tart.  You decide…Have a slice!

March 1, 2018–When I saw these cookies in the Food52 email I received I knew that I had to make them.  I quickly looked at the ingredients and realized that I had all of them in my pantry but I failed one of the basic rules of cooking…read the recipe in its entirety at least twice before attempting to make it.  I came home from work after another stressful day in an usually stressful week.  I set up my mise en place then read through the directions.  Holy crap!!!  There are A LOT of steps for such a simple cookie!

Before making the peanut butter filling (combination of peanut butter and powdered sugar) I first had to freeze the peanut butter.  Note to self, peanut butter does not freeze quickly.I then had to make the cookie which included among other things: peanut butter, cocoa powder, and white and brown sugar.  I altered the recipe slight by adding espresso powder to deepen the chocolate flavor.I think Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has the saying “Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together”.  I had to flatten each ball then put a peanut butter ball inside of it.Then I had to roll the cookie dough around the peanut butter ball, then roll that into sugar…told you it was a lot of steps!Next step was to flatten each cookie then top them with coarse salt.

After backing for a quick 8 minutes they were ready for consumption.Although they were VERY good they did take a long time to make.  If I make them again I will serve them with homemade vanilla ice cream, or, oh, wait a minute, maybe I’ll make ice cream sandwiches with them and/or make them flatter and make a caramel filled cookie!  Only time will tell.

February 12, 2018–One of my greatest friends, friend is actually not the word because she is so much more than that*, celebrated her birthday recently.  I know she thought I forgot because I didn’t send her a card, an email or even a text message.  The truth is I wanted to make her something special but my travels prevented me from completing the task.

*Do you have someone in your life that always seems to know when you need a little pick me up?  You don’t need or have to talk to them on a routine basis but somehow when you’re feeling a little down you get an email, or even better, snail mail from them.  This is my friend CZ.  She is an amazing person, has the biggest heart and gives of herself daily so I wanted to do something special for her birthday.  Although I’m a little late, I hope she enjoys the goodies that I made for her.

HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY CZ

From top to bottom: WL Weller Bourbon Caramels, Plain Chocolate, Chocolate Covered Peanuts, and Chocolate Covered Caramels.  The two ‘gift’ chocolates in the middle are plain chocolate.

Now I couldn’t just send her candy in a plain old box.  I had to do something special because she is special.

But wait, how would should know what was inside?

CZ the Golden Girls said it best, “Thank you for being a friend!”

January 13, 2018–One of my friends, VBOPP, bought me some chocolate molds from the Netherlands.  I didn’t feel like tempering chocolate and I was already making caramel sauce for another friend so I decided to pour some of the caramel sauce into the molds.  They turned out beautifully.  Of course I received a few complaints from people for not making chocolate and/or covering the caramels with chocolate.  Again, I didn’t feel like tempering chocolate :-).  That being said, I expect to receive some new molds in the coming weeks so we’ll see what happens.  For now, enjoy the pictures of the Christmas and Robot caramels made after Christmas and before the robots take over. 🙂

December 10, 2017–I took a combination of numerous recipes including Alton Brown’s classic caramel sauce to create this jar of delight.  Although caramel is one of the easiest things to make it is also one of the easiest things to mess up.

You have to watch it constantly or it would go from a dark brown batch of goodness to a burnt mess that possible ruins one of your favorite pans.

You can of course make it with or without the salt, I used Maldon Sea Salt Flakes; but I am unsure why you would make it without the Bourbon.  I used W.L. Weller Special Reserve.  I know some may some that’s a waste of an excellent Bourbon but if you like it straight up or in an Old Fashioned image what the tasting notes of honey, butterscotch, and a soft woodiness do to caramel.  Yum!!

Bring the water, sugar, corn syrup, and cream of tartar to a temperature of about 230 degrees.  Once it reaches 300 reduce the heat and stir.

As you can see the temperature is over 300 degrees and the mixture is starting to brown.  DO NOT look away…not even for a second!

Almost there…keep watching.

A perfect caramel color.

Remove from the heat being very careful when adding your heavy cream, salt, vanilla (optional) and bourbon (optional, but not really) because it will boil up!

Allow to cool before adding to a squeeze bottle, jar, or add during the last few churning minutes of your homemade ice cream.

Alton Brown has been known to say that you can put caramel to anything…even a spoon 🙂

November 26, 2017–So I decided to make the Texas Double Decker Pecan Cheesecake Pie from the November issue of Southern Living.  The problem is I decided at the last minute so didn’t have time to make the crust from scratch.  There are only a handful of items that you should buy pre-made.  Canned pumpkin puree, puff pastry, and shredded coconut are a few items on the very small list.  You should ALWAYS MAKE THE CRUST FROM SCRATCH!!!!  Laziness and cheating will get you no where fast when it comes to baking.

Although the flavor was still there, the premade crust was disappointing.  As you can see it shrunk into the pan an just does not look appetizing.

I had already made the cream cheese filling so there was no turning back.

Next came the chopped pecans

Then the brown sugar filling, which included Tennessee whiskey

I then put pecan halves on top of the whole thing

After baking for about 40 minutes and allowing to cool it was ready to eat

Wanna slice?

November 24, 2017–I was invited to a post-Thanksgiving Party.  You can’t show up empty handed so made K’s famous cream cheese brownies.  As always, they were a hit!

November 16, 2017 — One of my favorite food people is Alton Brown and his cooking show Good Eats.  Not only does he show you how to make amazing food but he also explains the science behind the recipe.  Now you know why it works and can adjust should you not have all of the ingredients.  The first time I made his Bourbon Pecan Pie was for Christmas 2016.  I transported it all the way from Miami, Florida to Dallas, Texas where I was spending the holiday at Tanya’s new home with our other friend Mel and her son Chris.  Surprisingly it made it through security without any of the TSA agents ‘claiming’ that it was unauthorized so that they could enjoy it for themselves.

It was time for our office Thanksgiving party so I decided to recreate this dish for my coworkers.

Spiced Pecans for the filling and the crust

Crust with the pecans and the first introduction of Bourbon!

10-inch tart pan waiting for the goodness

Filled with the spiced pecans

Bourbon and golden syrup filling

Ready to eat!

Love my Williams-Sonoma Goldtouch Bakeware.  Thanks M&T!

I had some dough and filling left over so I made a mini-one.  I topped it with some bourbon caramel and homemade vanilla bean ice cream.  Perfect for sharing or not!!

I also made one for Christmas 2016 to celebrating T’s new home in Frisco, TX.

November 12, 2017 — What do you do when you have baking items that are nearing their expiration date and/or you do not have enough of a particular item?  You mix them all together to form the Promiscuous Brownie–my take on Gaby’s Slutty Brownies from What’s Gabby Cooking.  I had Oero’s remaining from my Halloween Oreo Cupcakes along with multiple bags of left over chocolate chips.  The base is a homemade cookie dough with dark and semi-sweet chocolate chips.  This layer is topped with Oreo cookies; in my case double stuff and the halloween varieties; if you’re lucky you will get a brownie with one of each!  I did not want to make brownies so luck for me I still had a box of Ghirardelli’s Triple Chocolate Premium Brownie mix.  This is poured on top of the cookie dough and Oreo cookie layers.  I plan to serve it with a scoop of French Vanilla Blue Bell ice cream drizzled with homemade Dulce de Leche spiked with a little bourbon!

A Menage of Flavors – 12 Nov ’17

Are those Oeros?!?! – 12 Nov ’17

So why are these brownies promiscuous or slutty as they are otherwise known on the interweb?  I’ll would let your imagination run wild but I think it is because…

October 29, 2017 — Since I was already in the kitchen making pasta, see earlier post, and Halloween is right around the corner; I decided to put together some cupcakes.  To answer your questions…YES, that is a Halloween Oreo cookie serving as the base and YES, those are Halloween Oreo cookie crumbs distributed throughout the cheesecake!  I found the recipe Halloween Oreo Cupcakes on the A Bitchin’ Kitchen’s blog.

Halloween Oreo Cupcakes – 29 Oct ’17