Cinnamon Rolls | Fall

It’s on days like this where I could curl up with a book and a mug of strawberry milk(my favorite). The sky’s a perfect blue, the sun’s shining radiantly and beautiful golden and scarlet leaves are scattering across my lawn. I love perfect fall days, and I love fall in general. In my head it’s the cinnamon, apple, pumpkin, peach, brown sugar, and brown butter season. All of the lovely warm, homey flavors that warm you inside and out. And the colors of the food’s too, warm cinnamon-y browns, apple scarlets, and pumpkin oranges. They’re all just warm and comforting.

I really haven’t baked anything that fall themed this season, mostly because I haven’t had any time, with the new workload of homework, and with the times that I did have free, I was just busy. So finally when i finally did find a non busy time, I wanted to bake something simple, easy to make and fall themed, and so I made these cinnamon rolls.

These are amazingly delicious and soft, with the sweet, warm swirls of brown sugar, brown butter and cinnamon. You honestly don’t even need the icing. These were devoured within minutes right after I took them out of the oven, with the cinnamon butter filling bubbling on the sides of t

he perfectly hypnotically swirled rolls…

Cinnabon™ Knock-off Cinnamon Rolls

Makes approx. 20 or less

Adapted from Tartelette

Starting out with the dough…

• 2 1/4 a tsp. yeast
• 1 cup warm milk(make sure it’s from 105 ° F- 110°F. If it’s any less the yeast won’t activate you will end up with dense, hard rolls, or if you make it too high, the yeast will die, and you will still end up with dense hard rolls)
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup brown unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 4 cups all-purpose flour(and some more afterwards)

Filling

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup unsalted brown butter at room temperature

1. In a large bowl add in the yeast and the milk, and stir around a little until all the yeast is fully dissolved.
2. Add the sugar, the brown butter(still liquid-y but slightly cooled, you should be able to touch it for a bit, if it’s too hot it may cook the eggs a little), salt and eggs. Mix well. It’ll be very liquid-y still.
3. Sift in the flour cup by cup(it doesn’t make a difference if you dump in the whole thing or not, but it’s just easier).
4. You now have a giant lump of  pale sticky dough. Get some flour, shape it into a neat dough ball and leave it in a warm(not hot or it’ll cook) place to rise. Check back in a half an hour or until the dough has risen and doubled in size(it’s look really big compared to what you last saw, and if it isn’t let it stay there for a little more. It has to rise or else you will end up with dense cinnamon rolls) a tip I learned from 17andbaking: microwave a cup of water in the oven for 3 minutes and then leave the dough in there. It’s a perfect place because its warm and moist.
5. Meanwhile the dough rises mix together all the ingredients for the filling and leave it in the bowl. it should look very brown and feel grainy due to the brown sugar.
6. After the dough has risen take it out again and flour the place your working on, and roll it out evenly to a 21×16 rectangle( if you don’t get it even you will have “interestingly” formed swirls, that won’t be all that pretty, and sometimes if you roll it out unevenly enough you’ll have too much dough in one place and it won’t taste right. also, if you over knead it it will become elastic-y and very hard to roll out!
7. Spread the cinnamon sugar butter filling all over the dough, and roll it up starting from the longer 21 inch side and now you have this giant dough log thing.
8. Cut it up the giant log thing into 2 and half centimeter pieces and put into a greased pan, evenly spaced out, a little more than in the picture shown below.
9. Let the rolls rise again.
10. Bake at 400 degrees until light golden brown on top(approx 10 mins).

Icing

For the icing:

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1/4 cup (2 oz.) cream cheese at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream the butter and cream cheese vigorously. Then add the powdered sugar, and milk and vanilla extract.

Pour over cinnamon rolls and enjoy!

(They’re best served warm)

~Dee D.

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Chocolate Chip Cookies | Smiles

Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. It’s almost a solid fact. Well, excluding those who dislike chocolate(and possibly cookies). 

These cookies make people smile all the time. Like my sister today while I was baking them. She the most beautiful smile on her face today as she wandered into the kitchen.

“Watcha doin’?” She asked sounding like a girl from her favorite show, while here eyes were completely glued to the warm cookies I had place on the counter.

“Baking cookies.” I replied with a smile turning around to get the next batch, purposefully going slowly. Sure enough when I turned around to place the cookies on the counter top, my sister had disappeared along with a cookie leaving only a smudge of chocolate on the baking paper.

The thing is, that with these cookies, you get a variety of textures, and sometimes flavors. Each recipe is different in it’s own way, and they match different people’s tastes. Some people may like extremely soft cookies that melt in your mouth, others extremely crisp ones. I like really chewy ones with slightly crisp outsides that are fully cooled and don’t have a trace of warmth. And I swear this recipe I found is perfect for that.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Slightly adapted from original recipe from Words to Eat By

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 a cups of flour
• 1/2 a teaspoon salt
• 1/2 a teaspoon baking soda
• 1 stick of cold butter(cubed)(this one stick of butter is also know as 1/4 a pound of butter)
• 1/2 a cup of sugar
• 3/4 a cup of brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup of chocolate chips or chunks

Method:

Note: I did this all by hand. As in I literally stuck my hand in to the bowl. Working with spoons and things on chocolate chip cookies annoy me because it’s a dough and I just prefer sticking my hands in there. That and using your hands makes creaming a whole lot easier…

1. Sift together the flour baking powder and salt in bowl.
2. Now in a seperate bowl cream together the brown sugar the regular sugar and the butter until smooth.
3. Add in the egg and the vanilla extract until well mixed.
4. Slowly mix in the flour in adding it batch by batch
5. Lastly add in the chocolate chips or chunks.
6. Put the dough in to the fridge for 45 minutes.
7. Take it out and take a chunk of each cookie and flatten it out to a circle of any size you want(remember the bigger, the better the center will be just don’t make it crazily huge…I made them thinner and slightly bigger than my palm)
8. Bake at 350 degrees F and make sure you rotate the pan every few minutes if  you have an oven that does heat evenly. Bake until the edges start turning a golden brown.

Enjoy with a glass of milk! :)

~Dee D

 

Daring Bakers |Sugar Cookies

My first day of high was…interesting. I really can’t call it fun, nor can I call it drop dead horrible. The worst thing was that I got continually lost. No, I am not direction challenged or anything of that sort, it’s just that the school is huge. I know, I know, all high schools are huge. But I swear I think my high school is extra huge. For some reason I always seem to end up on the opposite side of the school from the place I need to get to! It’s just…annoying. A conversation between me and the hall monitor- Me: Hi, can you help me find my bus please? Her:Oh sure, what’s your bus number? Me: 8 Her: Oh dear, that’s actually at the other end of the school. Me:<twitching with anger silently>.

Anyways it has gotten better, and I can find my way to all of my classes and now my only pain is the long hours of homework…It makes me seriously miss my middle school…

But thank god I got Daring Baker’s done before school started, other wise I would have had absolutely no time to get anything in!

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

I was immediately excited after reading about this! I’ve always wanted to decorate sugar cookies, but never really had a chance to, considering I have a health conscious family and they tend to shy away from anything that involves the word sugar and has icing on it. So here was my chance to finally decorate!

So I went out to the store and bought everything with these beautiful mehndi -ish designs in my head, and then I came back and read all of the rest of the challenge. And then I realized it had to be September themed(as in if there is anything important to you in September you make that). It put a serious damper on my mehndi ideas but, I was still happy. Except I had no idea what sort of theme to do now.

So I listed a bunch of things that were going on in September for me:

• School
• Good-bye to constant visits to NYC
• Fall
• Asian Pear Picking(a tradition my family has, and every year we go to this Korean farm a couple of miles from our house, and pick this amazing, amazing pear…so crisp and juicy and with just the right touch of sweetness)

And that’s all I had. And slowly eliminated some on them only to end up with one.

• School -The last thing I wanted to do was remind myself of school.
• Goodbye to constant visits to NYC
• Fall – too many people would be doing that
• Asian Pear picking – How am I supposed to illustrate this? My cookie would end up decorated looking like a bunch of yellow circles with stems poking out on top…

And so goodbye to NYC it was. The story behind it? Well in the summer every year we have constant and random trips to NYC, but they always end when school starts because we don’t have enough time:( So these cookies were my good bye.

These look nothing like New York, but I always thought of it as the crazy city so I figured, why not actually make this crazy city?

And so I did, and I think this was pretty decent for my first time using Royal Icing. I will have to work on that though…the icing is little messy…okay maybe not a little…

So anyway want to learn how to make these?

Okay so first start out with the sugar cookies:

Sugar Cookies

• ½ cup + 7 Tbsp Brown Butter(or regular butter)at room temperature
• 3 cups + 3 Tbsp All Purpose Flour
• 1 cup Caster Sugar / Superfine Sugar
• 1 Large Egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract / Or seeds from 1 vanilla bean

Directions

Leave your butter out until it’s room tempreture! I always forget and then end up sticking it in the oven for a couple of minutes and ending up with uneven warmed butter. I doesn’t do anything, it just makes it harder to cream.

And making brown butter: Heat up a skillet and chop your butter up into slices and toss them on the skillet. Wait for it all to melt and continue waiting and watching the butter, and look for it turning a chocolate brown and smelling lovely and nutty(it’s an amazing smell!! I love it so much!) and then pour into a bowl and freeze for about five minutes or until it’s solid, and then after that just mix it up until its smooth and your good to go :)

1.Cream together the butter, sugar and any flavourings you’re using. Beat until just becoming creamy in texture.

Tip: Don’t over mix otherwise you’ll incorporate too much air and the cookies will spread during
baking, losing their shape.

2. Beat in the egg until well combined, make sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3. Add the sifted flour and mix on low until a non sticky dough forms. Tip: I don’t have a stand mixer so I find it easier to switch to dough hooks at this stage to avoid
flour flying everywhere.

4. Knead into a ball and divide into 2 or 3 pieces. (This makes it wayyy easier, trust me)

5. Roll out each portion between parchment paper to a thickness of about 5mm/1/5 inch (0.2 inch)
Refrigerate for a minimum of 30mins.
Tip: Recipes commonly just wrap the whole ball of dough in clingwrap and then refrigerate it for an
hour or overnight, but by rolling the dough between parchment, this shortens the chilling time and
then it’s also been rolled out while still soft making it easier and quicker.

6. Once chilled, peel off parchment and place dough on a lightly floured surface.

7. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters or a sharp knife.

8. Arrange shapes on parchment lined baking sheets and refrigerate for another 30mins to an hour.
Tip: It’s very important you chill them again otherwise they’ll spread while baking.
Re-roll scraps and follow the above process until all scraps are used up.
Preheat oven to  350°F.
Bake until golden around the edges, about 8-15mins depending on the size of the cookies.
Tip: Bake same sized cookies together otherwise mixing smaller with larger cookies could result in
some cookies being baked before others are done.
Tip: Rotate baking sheets half way through baking if your oven bakes unevenly.

9. Leave to cool on cooling racks.

10. Once completely cooled, decorate as desired.
Tip: If wrapped in tinfoil/cling wrap or kept in airtight containers in a cool place, un-decorated
cookies can last up to a month.

Okay now…

Royal Icing:

• 2½ – 3 cups Icing / Confectioner’s / Powdered Sugar, unsifted
• 2 Large Egg Whites
• 2 tsp Lemon Juice
• 1 tsp Almond Extract, optional

Directions

1. Beat egg whites with lemon juice until combined.

• Tip: It’s important that the bowls/spoons/spatulas and beaters you use are thoroughly cleaned and
grease free.

1. 2. Sift the icing sugar to remove lumps and add it to the egg whites.

• Tip: I’ve listed 2 amounts of icing sugar, the lesser amount is good for a flooding consistency, and the larger amount is for outlining, but you can add even more for a much thicker consistency good for writing. If you add too much icing sugar or would like to make a thinner consistency, add very small amounts of water, a few drops at a time, until you reach the consistency you need.

1. 3. Beat on low until combined and smooth.

• Use immediately or keep in an airtight container.
• Tip: Royal Icing starts to harden as soon as it’s in contact with air so make sure to cover containers with plastic wrap while not in use.

Consistency:
• Mix your royal icing according to the recipe/instructions.
• Separate into 2 different bowls, one lot of icing for outlining, the other for flooding.
• For the outlining icing, drag a knife through the surface of the Royal Icing.
• If the surface becomes smooth at around 10 seconds, the icing is at the correct consistency.
• Tip: If your icing is too thick, thin it by adding a few drops of water. Mix, count to 10 seconds, then if it’s still too thick, add a few more drops of water, repeat, etc.
• Tip: To thicken your icing, add small amounts of icing sugar until thick enough for the 10 second test.
• For the flooding/filling icing, drag a knife through the surface of the Royal Icing.
• If the surface becomes smooth at around 3-4 seconds, the icing is at the correct consistency.
• Tip: If your icing is too thick, thin it by adding a few drops of water. Mix, count to 3-4 seconds, then if it’s still too thick, add a few more drops of water, repeat, etc.
• Tip: To thicken your icing, add small amounts of icing sugar until thick enough for the 3-4 second test.

Colouring
• Separate Royal Icing into separate bowls for each colour you plan on using.
• Tip: Make sure to cover the bowls with cling film or a damp cloth to prevent the top from setting and then making lumps
• Using a toothpick, add gel or paste colouring to each bowl and mix thoroughly until desired colour is reached
• Tip: You can use liquid food colouring but you might not be able to get the desired strength of colour, liquid colouring will also thin out the icing so you’ll need to add more icing sugar to thicken it again.

Prepping and Filling Your Bag
• Attach your icing tips to the piping bags using couplers
• Tip: You don’t need to use a coupler but it makes it easier if you want to change tip sizes
• Tip: A size 1 tip is best for doing intricate details. A size 2 tip is good for some details and outlining. Fill or flood with sizes 2 – 5.
• Tip: You don’t need a piping bag, you can use a parchment cone or ziplock bag with a tiny bit snipped off the corner. I would however recommend getting a piping set if you don’t have one as it will be much easier and more precise.
• Stand the piping bags in glasses with the tops of the bags folded over the top of the glass.
• Fill your icing bags with each coloured icing.
• Tie the ends of the piping bags with elastic bands.

Decorating: Outlining
• Fit the piping bag with a size 2 or 3 tip.
• Tip: Or snip a very small bit of the corner off of a parchment cone or Ziploc bag
• Hold the piping bag at a 45 degree angle above the cookie where you want to start the outline.
• Gently squeeze the piping bag and start moving in the direction you want to outline the cookie.
• Start lifting the piping bag away from the cookie so that the flow of icing falls onto the cookie, making it an even and neater outline.
• As you start to reach the beginning of the outline, bring the piping tip closer to the surface of the cookie to meet the start of the icing outline.
• Tip: If you’re doing an intricate cookie, like a snow flake, you won’t be able to lift the tip as far away from the cookie.
• If you’re doing a different colour border, eg a black border, let the outline dry before flooding. If using the same colour for the outline as you’re flooding with, begin flooding after doing the outline.

Decorating: Flooding
• Fit the piping bag with a size 2-5 tip, the bigger the area being filled, the bigger the tip.
• Tip: Or cut slightly more off the corner of a Ziploc bag to create a slightly larger opening.
• Quickly zigzag back and forth over the area you want to fill.
• Tip: You need to be quick when flooding the cookie so don’t worry too much if it’s not filled in neatly.
• Using a toothpick or clean paintbrush, push the icing around into the gaps that are still remaining.
• Either pick up the cookie and tip it from side to side to even out the filling, or lightly bang the cookie down on your kitchen counter.

Decorating: Melding Colours
• If you would like to add lines or dots to the base colour that you flooded the cookie with so that they meld and dry as a smooth surface, you need to add the lines/dots/patterns as quickly as possible after flooding and smoothing the surface of the cookie.
• Tip: Make sure to have all the colours you’re planning on using ready and close by so that you can switch between colours quickly
• Simply pipe other colours onto the flooded surface in patterns or lines which you can either leave as that or then drag a toothpick through to make marbling patterns.

Decorating: On top of flooding
• If you’d like to do other patterns/outlines or writing on top of the flooded surface so that they are raised above the flooded background, simply allow the icing to dry, preferably over night.
• Fit the piping bag with tip sizes 1-3.
• Pipe patterns or write on top of the dry icing
• Tip: For writing, the consistency of your icing should be thicker rather than thinner, drag a knife through your icing and when the surface smoothes around 12-15 seconds, the consistency is correct.

Packaging and Storing
• Once fully decorated, allow cookies to dry for 24 hours in a cool and dry area.
• Stack cookies in an airtight container, from largest cookies at the bottom, to smallest and more intricate at the top, with parchment or wax free paper in between the layers.
• Store in a cool and dry area with the container’s lid firmly sealed.
• Will last for about a month if stored this way.

Hope you have fun making your own and enjoy!

Enjoy with a glass of milk! (seriously. I know most people usually have chocolate chip cookies with milk but I like these with milk too, because it downplays the sweetness)

Chocolate Souffle & HS

Summer time has diminished down to a week. Exactly and precisely a week. And I’m scared. I’m starting high school this year, but I have no idea what it’s like. I’m hoping crazily that it won’t be like movies make it out to be. Mean, nasty girls glaring at you constantly, and being shoved and jostled constantly into walls simply trying to get to your next class, where you’re tortured with a variety of circles, squares and triangles in geometry. How lovely does that sound?

And then the supposed work load? That just terrifies me all the more. Apparently I won’t even have time to eat, forget making things to eat. My blog posts’ll probably dwindle down to a post a month maybe? I certainly hope not. I really enjoy making things, photographing them and writing them up for this blog.

Ahh, I’m really going to miss these lovely summer days, as hot and scorching as they are…And also my nice warm lunches…and all this spare time…and my variety of desserts that I make weekly… speaking of which I made souffle! And I was very successful doing so!

I love chocolate souffle. I truly, truly do. I’ts all lovely and light, and sweet and chocolaty. But why, oh why, does fall down so very fast? What you see in these pictures are nothing compared to what they were in the oven. My mom was terrified that they explode or something because if they do, they hit the oven walls, and when they hit the oven walls they start burning and what if it starts a fire??

But anyway back to the temperamental-ness of souffle. It deflates crazily quick. Like in two minutes or three minutes.

Let me show you some pictures:

It’s annoying isn’t it?

Actually I have no idea how long it took to go completely concave(but it started falling approximately ten seconds later right after i pulled them out of the oven)… I had to rush off to somewhere after I took these out of the oven…

But it won’t take too long. I have no idea how Aran G. from Cannelle et Vanille keeps hers up long enough to take awesome pictures…it’s crazy. You really should take a look at them. Very impressive. I simply love her pictures…

That and I also hate the look on top of it. Cracked uneven and ugly. So, after as I was eating this, i noticed the sides came off the dish absolutely cleanly, and the sides were absolutely smooth. So, then it hit me: why not flip it over? I did, and all the pictures you’ve been seeing so far, exempt from the picture directly above this section and the one above that, are flipped.

Here’s the recipe:

Oh and one last thing: The quality of chocolate you use makes the souffle.

Here we go.

Chocolate Souffle

(this is a meringue based souffle by the way)

From Saveur

makes 14 oz

• 3 tablspoons milk(of any sort)
• 4 and 1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar(keep ‘em seperated) & a bit more for dusting the souffle dishes
• 4 oz of semi sweet chocolate(finely chopped)
• 2 eggs yolks
• 3 egg whites
• Confectioners sugar to sprinkle on top!

1. Preheat your oven to 375.
2. Brush the dishes you are using to bake this souffle(stick with things smaller than 2 and a half inches deep and 6 six inches in diameter, it helps rise) with butter using vertical strokes(helps the souffle rise), and then dust them with sugar.
3. Put the milk and the four tablespoons of sugar in a small sauce pan over medium high heat until the sugar if fully dissolved, and then add the chocolate, and let it sit for a little. Then turn off the heat and stir it up until the chocolate is fully melted. Then scrape it into a bowl and let it cool down for ten minutes, and beat the two egg yolks in.
4. In a different bowl beat the egg whites until it’s foamy, at which point you add in the remaining(1 and a half tablespoons) of sugar and beat until you have stiff peaks.
5. Gently fold in the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture 1/3 at a time until you can no longer see any white streaks. Then spoon into the dish(s) you are using(fill to the top!) and put in the oven for approx. twenty minutes or until it appears to be fully risen. It should look like this, except in the oven:

1. now after it’s cooled down a little and deflated a bit, push in the edges hanging out, so that the bottom is even, and there is nothing hanging out outside or over the rim of the dish. You should be able to run a finger over the top of the dish and around the dish without the souffle interfering.
2. then simply place the place you with to serve it on on top of the dish, making sure it is centered, and flip!

1. Dust a bit of sugar over the top for presentation, and garnish with leaves, strawberries, what ever you like :)

And voila! There you have your souffle!

Enjoy( and beware of the collapsing)

~D.D.

Petit Fours & Daring Bakers

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

I may have developed a grudge against ice cream.

And I don’t think the ice cream likes me all too much either…

Seriously.

Last time I worked with ice cream it didn’t work out all too well.

And this time making these petit fours? It was messy. Like with ice cream melting all over the place. Why can it not stay nice and solid for like five minutes or something? Arg.

But other than that i rather enjoyed(especially the brown butter!!!) this challenge, and loved how it came out all little and cute(although not exactly perfect).

I’m not sure if can see the coffee ice cream layer because it’s practically the same color as the brown butter pound cake i used and it’s not all that thick.

Oh, and let me tell you about the brown butter. It is magical stuff. Seriously. I love the stuff, mostly because of the smell. Yes the smell…all warm and nutty and creamy and amazing. Oh and by the way for those of you who don’t know what brown butter is, its just simply butter cooked until it turns a dark honey color. I was ranting about browned butter to my father, and he said: “There is no such thing as brown butter.” He though it was a type of butter, not simply cooked butter.

I was slightly disappointed with the brown butter pound cake though…neither the taste nor the lovely, lovely smell of the browned butter remained. And it turned out a bit dry, but I thought that was simply me because I sort of forgot about it(i was working on my summer reading essays), but when I read another bloggers post, I realized it wasn’t just me with the dryness problem…but I didn’t have an issue with that after I assembled the whole thing, because the richness of the coffee ice cream and the chocolate glaze pretty much over powered the brown butter pound cake, and the the melt-y ice cream must have been absorbed by the pound cake which made it bit more moist.

And over all, these came out delicious!

But anyway here we go with the recipe:

Coffee Ice Cream

• 1/2 Cup of milk (i used two percent)
• A pinch of salt
• 1/4 a cup and 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 1  and 1/2 tspns of instant coffee
• 1 cups heavy cream
• 3 large large egg yolks
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

So now we start out with the milk, the salt, the instant coffee and the sugar, in a medium sized sauce pan, and heat that until it starts to steam, and then remove it from heat and let that cool down to room temperature. Meanwhile set up an ice bath( basically a large bowl filled, partially with ice and water, with a smaller bowl on the ice water). Grab a strainer, and pour the heavy cream into the strainer over the smaller bowl of the ice bath. Then in another bowl beat the egg yolks together(lightly) and then heat up the milk in the saucepan until its warm, and slowly pour it little by little, and constantly whisking(otherwise the eggs will scramble). Once the egg yolks are warmed up pour the egg yolk and milk mixture back into the sauce pan which you had previously used and let that cook over low heat, and stir constantly with something you can scrape the bottom of the pan with. The mixture will eventually thicken to a custard which can thinly coat the back of the spatula. Go grab your strainer again and strain(if you don’t you’ll end up with weird little lumps throughout your ice cream) this mixture into the heavy cream, and stir that up and until the whole mixture is cooled down. Now mix in that one tsp. of vanilla extract.

If you have a ice cream maker: Cool it for several hours and then churn according to your manufacturers directions.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker: Simply let freeze for about 45 minutes, and then stir the mixture vigorously. Check back in a half an hour and stir vigorously again. Continue doing so until the whole mixture is completely frozen and appears to be like ice cream.

Now on to…

The Brown Butter pound Cake

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 bars and 3 tblspns of butter(or just 19 tablespoons) all sliced up

2 cups of sifted cake flour(not self rising)

1/2 tspn salt

1/2 cup of light brown sugar

1/3 cup of granulated sugar

4 large eggs

Firstly preheat your oven to 325 degrees farenheit. Then grab a skillet over medium heat. Warm it up a bit and then add the butter. Stir the butter around until the butter turns a darkened honey color or chocolate. Finally when it turns that color pour into a bowl and leave it in the freezer until it solidifies.

Now whisk together the sifted cake flour, baking powder, and the salt. In a seprate bowl beat the brown butter the light brown sugar and regular sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy(this should take about 2 minutes). Then beat in an egg at a time, and then finally add the vanilla extract and then lastly add the flour baking soda and salt mixture.

Flour and butter a 9 x 9 pan and scrape the batter out into it, and smooth the top over with a rubber spatula(or a clean hand). Bake until you are able to insert a toothpick into the center which will come out clean and the top is golden brown.

Let the pan cool down for about fifteen minutes and then flip over on a rack.

Next…

The Chocolate Glaze (make this when i say so in assembling the petit fours)

a heaped cup of semi sweet chocolate chopped finely

1 cup of heavy cream

1 and 1/2 tablespoons of agave nectar(or light corn syrup or golden syrup)

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Bring the heavy cream and light corn syrup to a boil in a sauce pan over medium heat continuously stirring. Turn the heat off and add in the chocolate, and let it sit for 30 seconds to let it melt in and then stir once again to completely melt the rest of the chocolate. Finally stir in the vanilla and let it cool a little before glazing the petit fours.

Finally Assembling the petit fours.

Let the ice cream warm up a little.

line the 9×9 pan you used for baking the pound cake with plastic wrap and and spread the ice cream around evenly and freeze for a two hours.

Meanwhile using a cake leveler or a knife cut the pound cake in half, from the sides, not from the center so you end up with two large thin cake layers.

Then after the two hours, put one layer of the brown butter pound cake and top with the layer of ice cream and then top that with the last layer of pound cake.

And then freeze again. I did this over night, but several hours should do the trick.

Okay now the next step is where I had my ice cream disaster.

Make the glaze

Now take the cake and ice cream out of the freezer, and now you have to cut it up into squares approximately one and a half inches in size.

My issue: When i started to cut it it was fine. After a while when I was cutting it up the ice cream was melting and hence, it pretty much squirted out of in between the petit fours.

place all petit fours in the freezer on a tray lined with parchment paper and a good amount of space in between.

Then glaze the petit fours, taking each out of the freezer placing each petit four on a fork and pouring the glaze over. You may have to reheat the glaze a couple of time if it get really gloppy and thick. Heating it will thin it out.

Place each one in the freezer after glazing.

Finally decorate and serve!

I used white chocolate to decorate mine.

Hope you enjoy!!

~D.D.

P.S. Thank you Elissa for this awesome challenge :)

I loved it!

Julia Child & Chocolate Mousse

Last night as I was sorting through my email I opened up a news letter from Saveur about recipes from movies. I, of course, was instantly interested, mostly because I wanted to find out how to make ratatouille(a dish that wins over a harsh critic?? It must be good!). But along with ratatouille I found a recipe for Julia Child’s chocolate mousse, and immediately dug out my recipe book and scrawled it down. Of course I wanted to try it out. And so I did, and i turned out awesome(although a little denser than I thought).

I ended up with a whole brownie tray sized amount of the mousse! Wayyy to much for my health conscious family(funny how a girl who likes sitting about making desserts ends up with one) so i ended up giving half of it to neighbors.

But it was fairly easy to make, and apparently you can make it entirely by hand(my scrawny arm muscles and I tried. Frankly it did not work out.)

Go here for the recipe: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2008/05/perfect-chocola/

I followed the whole thing word by word, so I see no point in restating the whole entire thing. Just one small thing, if your going to do it by hand, be prepared for sore arms and make sure you set out some time because it’ll take a while…

Mmmm, it’s so good!

~D.D.

Chocolate & Marshmallows & Graham Crackers

I love s’mores.

They remind me of golden afternoons with my sister laughing and smearing chocolate on each other’s faces while making them.

They remind me of  ebony nights that were lit up only by the scarlet glow of the campfire which my friends and I gathered around.

They’re a beautiful mix of chocolate, marshmallow, and graham cracker.

I suppose this post is for my love of s’mores…just some pictures…

In the case that you don’t know how to make them …

1. smear some graham cracker halves with chocolate.

2. Grab a marshmallow, and skewer it on the very end of the skewer, and roast it over a open flame(camp fire, stove top…)

3. After the marshmallow is golden brown or just really burnt looking, put the marshmallow on the chocolate smeared graham cracker and smush it down with the other half.

And there you have your smore.

Ahh, such beautiful over sweetness….

~D.D.

Chocolate & Strawberries

The past few days have been sleepy. Utterly and completely sleepy. I’ve been sitting around practically doing nothing, except this summer reading project I have from school. So when I found a box of strawberries and a bar of dark chocolate in the fridge I immediately thought, I have nothing to do, so why not chocolate strawberries??

Ahhh, I absolutely love these things…The flavor of the strawberries and chocolate are a perfect combo… But, strawberries and chocolate aren’t the only ingredients. If you just melt chocolate, and dip a strawberry in it, and let that harden, you’ll end up with a very….rough looking chocolate coating. I wish I had a picture to show you what it looks like, but some one already ate my rough-chocolate-strawberry-example. So, if you don’t want that rough chocolate  coating, you need butter. Yes, butter, and just a little bit. It really smooths out the chocolate so nicely!

You can use any chocolate types but I personally think dark chocolate, and semi sweet chocolate taste the best(better contrast with the sweetness of the strawberry!)

And a little tip for strawberries: The darker and the squishier, the sweeter(at least most of the time).

So basically, you simply melt a bunch of chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, and then you add in some butter, then you take the strawberry and dip it in, then(this is if you don’t mind a flat bottom strawberry(a picture is below) cover a plate in plastic wrap and place the strawberry on that and let it cool for a while in the refrigerator.

A flat bottomed strawberry:

However if you have strong distaste for this kind of chocolate strawberry like me, you can either:

a. grab some tooth picks stick the strawberry on that dip it, and then stick the other end of the tooth pick into something that will elevate the strawberry

b. after you dip the strawberry you can attempt to flip it over on to its top and hope it balances.

After I made these and put them in the refrigerator i think some of them may have dissapeared…

anyway, i hope you enjoy your own :)

~D.D.

Photogenic Apples & A Crumbly

Nowadays, I’m spending a lot of time going through a variety of food blogs and wondering the same question over and over as i read each post: How the heck are they writing so much??? And it’s not like they’re taking up most of the post with the recipe for the food they happen to be talking about, instead there’s one little link at the very bottom. My posts are approximately a small paragraph with a bunch of pictures and a recipes which is pretty much seventy five percent of the post. The other twenty-five percent are divided between pictures(fifteen percent or so) and my own talking(five percent).

And also, I have learned that apples are excellent picture subjects!

Yeah, it’s kind of random, but I was making apple crumbly(as you see in the post), and taking random pictures for this post so…

But now to apple crumbly: I suppose this is a bit different from my other posts, mostly because it’s somewhat healthier. I think a cup of this should be only about four hundred calories…which I think is not that bad…for a desert at least…

What do you think is a good amount of calories for a desert?

So here we go with the recipe:

Apple Crumbly

(adapted from original recipe(which’s source I can’t recall))

• 1 and 1/3 a cup of flour
• 1/2 a teaspoon of salt
• 6 tablespoons & 1 tablespoon+1 tspn of light brown sugar(keep these separated
• 3 tablespoons of butter unsalted
• 2 & 1/2tablespoons of toasted almonds sliced or slivered(I usually buy these, because trying to cut almonds annoys me)
• 2 granny smith apples
• 2 golden delicious apples
• 2 tablespoons of raisins
• 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 6 cloves, ground

Okay, so now roast the almonds, and put them to the side.

Then, take the raisins and put them in steaming hot water and let them soak there, and putting that to the side too.

Preheat your oven to 350.

Now take the six tablespoons of sugar & the salt & flour and mix them together, then chop the butter(all of it) up into chunks the size of your finger tips and add that to the mixture of sugar, salt & flour. Now using your fingers sort of blending it into the mixture until the whole thing looks bread crummy-ish.

Then simply mix in the almonds. It should look like that down there.

And if it does, great! You’ve finished with the crumbly part, now for the apples…

Take your four apples(remember two granny smith, two golden delicious), and peel and cut them into chunks approximately the size of your thumbs finger tip.

This was a pain since I really suck at peeling apples :( No, i don’t go slice up my fingers trying to peel these, but I’m just really slow. Really, really slow.

My work station:

Now take the apples and add them in a different large bowl and take the raisins, drain them, and add them in to the bowl apples along with the sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. Now mix that up( I just use my hand and toss them around). Keep mixing until theres a bit of juice spread around in the bowl. Then grab a pan(I use and reccomend a 9×11 1/2 one) or you can use individual ramekins(I usually use ones the size of my palm), and spray the insides with non stick cooking spray, and pour the apples into the pan spreading it out evenly. Then on top of that spread the crumble part evenly and put that in the oven. Take it out when the top is a golden brown color…well the color kinda got whitened out here…

And now simply scoop and serve!

Hope you enjoy!

~D.D.