Snickerdoodles
April 16, 2008 at 4:40 pm | Posted in book review, cookies & bars, sweet things | 17 Comments
I think that snickerdoodles are totally underrated. Sure everyone loves them, but if asked to name a favorite cookie, I bet very few people think of them first. They don’t have chips, or nuts or raisins, but their beauty is in their old-fashioned simplicity…and in their adorable crinkly tops.
When I first thumbed though The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy (see here for my review), her recipe for snickerdoodles was the first that I wanted to try. This is such an easy cookie to make, and you don’t even have to have any fancy ingredients. The effort to reward ratio here is really in the baker’s favor. The recipe makes a lot– three dozen cookies if you use her one ounce size guideline. That’s too many for us to eat at once, but cookie dough freezes beautifully. So in a few days, I can thaw out a bit more dough and bake a few more of these sweet, cinnamony and slightly chewy cookies. Lovely!
The smell of cinnamon and butter baking in the oven is so good– I should manufacture a snickerdoodle-scented room spray.
Snickerdoodles– makes 3 dozen cookies
from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. All rights reserved. Copyright © Melissa Murphy, 2008
For the dough:
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher saltFor the cinnamon sugar:
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ cup sugar
-In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs and mix until combined.
-In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. The dough will be soft and too sticky to roll. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
-Position a rack in the top and bottom thirds of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
-For the cinnamon sugar: Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
-Using a 1-ounce cookie scoop, or a tablespoon, shape the dough into balls and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
-Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten them slightly with your fingertips so that they stay put. Bake for about 12 to 13 minutes, or until the bottoms are slightly golden in color. These cookies are supposed to be chewy, so do not overbake. Remove to a wire rack to cool.
*Snickerdoodles keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days. For longer storage, freeze well wrapped in plastic wrap and then aluminum foil for up to 3 weeks. Do not uncover before defrosting.
Book Review: The Sweet Melissa Baking Book
April 16, 2008 at 2:08 pm | Posted in book review | 7 Comments
I had a little treat waiting for me in my mail pile the other day: a copy of The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. I’ve never met Melissa herself, but do have a very personal relationship with her shop. Before moving to Sydney last year, I lived in Brooklyn Heights. When I first arrived on the Brooklyn scene in 1996, there wasn’t really anywhere to get a great slice of cake or a beautiful tart (and I was too busy sitting in a cubicle to be making things myself). Then one day a couple years later, as I was running errands in neighboring Cobble Hill, I noticed a little storefront with wedding cakes in the window…it was Sweet Melissa Pâtisserie. Finally–just what the neighborhood needed! It was cute and small, but had places to sit down and have tea and sweets from real cups and plates, and best of all: a display case full of gorgeous treats! Melissa even had her French Culinary Institute diploma framed on the wall. Fast forward a few more years, and I myself was a graduate of FCI’s pastry program. I trailed for a job opening at Sweet Melissa just a couple of weeks after graduation. Well, I didn’t get the job (I had no professional kitchen experience at that point), but I kept up my monthly tradition of going for dessert at Sweet Melissa’s (after dinner at the sushi place next door) right up until I moved to Sydney.
Now, back to the book, which, for obvious reasons, I couldn’t wait to crack into. From time to time (otherwise knowns as always) I still find myself homesick for Brooklyn, so looking through this book was almost comforting for me. Melissa says that her goal is “…to make everyone’s favorite desserts better than they’ve had them before.” Even if your not familiar with her shop, you’ll still be familiar with many of the desserts in her book. There aren’t many photos, but if you’re like me, you’ll recognize many of her recipes as things you grew up with and still crave. And she has plenty of things in the book that are uniquely hers as well. These are things that you will want to make, and even though she takes no shortcuts, her directions are so clearly written that you’d be hard pressed to mess them up!
Melissa’s six chapters cover the gamut of sweets, from ‘Dessert for Breakfast’ to ‘Sunday Supper’s Grand Finale,’ with cookies, layer cakes and fruit desserts along the way. And the final chapter, ‘Favorite Gifts: Truffles, Brittles, and Candies,’ is really special. Who wouldn’t think you were amazing if you made them honey cream caramels?? Melissa also includes ‘pro tips’ that will make home bakers more confident in the kitchen and offers us quick snippets of why these recipes are special to her.
I’ve already made a few things from the book, and all with great results! You’ll get to see those as separate posts as I’m able to write them up…so stay tuned.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Marshmallows
April 15, 2008 at 5:31 am | Posted in groups, other sweet, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 53 Comments
The word of the day is althaiophobia: a fear of marshmallows. And no, I didn’t make that up.
I’m kinda afraid of marshmallows. Not really the marshmallows themselves, but the gelatin inside them. When I saw that Judy of Judy’s Gross Eats had chosen marshmallows as this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I was a little frightened. I really wanted to participate, but I really didn’t want to use gelatin, and after the agar-agar disaster of ’07, I wasn’t too excited to try that again either. Luckily, this time of year the Kosher section of the supermarket is pretty well-stocked, and I was able to pick up a box of fish gelatin. I’d never used it before, and wasn’t sure how to (the package labeling is in Hebrew, so it didn’t help me out a lot). It’s a little more granular than regular gelatin, but I decided to treat it the same way, since I didn’t have any better ideas.
I went with Dorie’s ‘Playing Around’ instructions for cappuccino marshmallows, and based on some advice from other TWDers, just stirred in the cappuccino mixture at the very end to keep the marshmallows from deflating. I set them in a glass baking dish rather than a baking sheet, which just seemed easier to me, and made them nice and tall. I wasn’t sure if they would set up or not with that gelatin, so as soon as I tipped the mix into the dish, I immediately left the house and went to the movies (if you haven’t seen ‘Lars and the Real Girl,’ you should!). If there’s one bad kitchen habit I have, it’s that I must endlessly poke and inspect things that I should just leave alone.
I was really pleased with how they turned out! They were soft and squishy and high. Now here’s the cake plate shot, à la Dorie.
You can find this recipe on Judy’s Gross Eats— thanks Judy! It’s also in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Now go check out the TWD Blogroll!
TWD Rewind: Gooey Chocolate Cakes
April 11, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 11 Comments
This cake was not too photogenic, but it sure was delicious. While I was away, the Tuesdays with Dorie gang, led this time by Leigh of Lemon Tartlet, made Dorie Greenspan’s Gooey Chocolate Cakes. I knew I wanted to whip them up myself as soon as I was back home. And poor R hadn’t had a homemade dessert in weeks, so a little chocolate gooeyness seemed like a good place to start.
In her opening description, Dorie notes that these cakes are fairly ubiquitous at this point. In fact, at one restaurant where I used to work, we had a very similar molten cake on our menu for private parties. We’d do up giant batches (sometimes over 100, depending on the size of the party) of individual ones, also using disposable aluminum cups as Dorie suggests. Here, quantities were a bit more manageable…I only made two!
If you’d like to make up these little ultra-chocolatey cakes yourself (and it’s easy, I promise!), the recipe is on Lemon Tartlet and in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.
Brought to you by the letter E
April 10, 2008 at 5:32 pm | Posted in other stuff | 7 Comments
So, I am finally back from my vacation. I love to travel, but after being gone for almost a month, I must say it feels pretty good to be back at home. I’ve really missed being in the kitchen, but before I start throwing flour around, spilling milk and accidentally dropping eggs on the floor, I need to unpack and do about 5,000 loads of laundry.
Before I can even do those things, though, I really need to give an overdue thank you to four special ladies. Joanna in the kitchen, Indigo at Happy Love Strawberry, Danielle at Make No Little Meals and Laurie the quirky cupcake have all rated my blog E for Excellent!
With people that I actually know, I’m pretty much in the closet about this blog. Even my family would think I was a total freakshow if they knew that I basically keep a diary of and take a hundred photos of everything I eat (they have enough other accumulated evidence that I am freakshow as it is!). Maybe I should get over this embarrassment, but I am always wishing that my posts were more eloquently written or that my pictures were sharper or better styled. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one ever commented here, so I am truly surprised that anyone would call this stuff ‘excellent!’ Joanna, Indigo, Danielle and Laurie–thank you so much! Things like this encourage me, not just to keep at my little blog, but to keep trying to make it better.
OK, teary acceptance speech now over! There are so many blogs that I think are excellent, but I’m going to single out just one and pass this along to a blogger whose site I have been reading since the start. Tracy at Cake Batter and Crumbs, I give your blog an E for Excellent!
Daring Bakers in March: Perfect Party Cake
March 30, 2008 at 12:16 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, daring bakers, groups, layer cakes, sweet things | 94 Comments
If you´ve looked at this blog lately, you´ll notice that the sweets in most of my recent posts stem from the same source– Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan is turning into one of my most used cookbooks on the shelf! This recipe also comes from that book, but this time my post is not a result of Tuesdays with Dorie, but of the Daring Bakers. Morven from Food Art and Random Thoughts chose Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake as the March DB challenge.
Morven gave us basically free reign to flavor and fill our cakes however we liked, but I wanted to basically stick with Dorie’s version (which she actually accredits to Nick Malgieri), just to give the recipe a fair shot. I used the cake and buttercream recipes as they were written. Instead of using raspberry jam though, I filled my cake with blueberry preserves.
If I had one “issue” with this cake, it would be that I didn’t have enough buttercream for a good coat of frosting on the outside. I must have gone too crazy between the layers– oops!– and what I wound up with was more like a crumb coat. What to do?? I wasn’t about to make more buttercream, so I decided to toast my coconut flakes. Of course I didn’t get a pristine snow white cake like Dorie’s, but it desperately needed a little camouflage.
I know I must have said this a million times before, but OMG I love cake, and wow, was this good! The buttercream was outstanding, and the cake was really moist (and the jam helps keep it that way). I liked the instructions in the cake recipe to rub together the lemon zest and sugar. This is something we always do with citrus in the restaurant where I work and it really helps bring out the flavor in the zest.
Thanks Morven for this month’s challenge! For the Perfect Party Cake recipe, check out Food Art and Random Thoughts. And for the complete list of DBers, check out our great big blogroll.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel-Topped Flan
March 25, 2008 at 2:10 am | Posted in groups, pudding/mousse, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 40 Comments
I may be out of town right now, but I wasn’t about to miss out on my chance to choose the recipe for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie meet-up– at the rate the group is growing, I probably won’t get another pick! I decided to venture into the “spoon desserts” section near the back of the book, and go with Dorie’s Caramel-Topped Flan.
Flan is simple to prepare…it’s a no-fuss custard that gets baked in a waterbath. What makes it really special is the gorgeous amber-glass layer of caramel that adheres to the custard when you turn it out of the pan. I love the combination of the cold wiggly custard and the bittersweet caramel.
I scaled back the recipe and made a couple of individual flans in ramekins, rather than one large one. I also did the “playing around” variation, using coconut milk instead of heavy cream. I put a little twist on it by infusing the milks with lime zest and using rum instead of vanilla extract.
The recipe is, of course, in Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, but I also include it below. Don’t forget to check out Tuesdays with Dorie to visit all of this week’s posts.
Caramel-Topped Flan– makes one 8″x2″ flan
adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours
Note: You can make individual servings by using six 6-oz or seven or eight 4-oz ramekins or containers instead of the larger cake pan.
For the caramel:
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons water
squirt of fresh lemon juiceFor the flan:
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 1/4 cups whole milk
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Getting ready:
-Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line a roasting pan or 9″x13″ baking pan with a double thickness of paper towels. Fill a teakettle with water and put it on to boil; when the water boils, turn off heat.
-Put a metal 8″x2″ round cake pan– not a nonstick one– in the oven to heat while you prepare the caramel. (If you are using individual molds or ramekins, then skip this step.)
To Make the Caramel:
-Stir the sugar, water and lemon juice together in a small heavy-bottomed saucepan. Put the pan over medium-high heat and cook until the sugar becomes an amber-colored caramel, about 5 minutes-remove the pan from the heat at the first whiff of smoke.
-Remove the cake pan from the oven and, working with oven mitts, pour the caramel into the pan and immediately tilt the pan to spread the caramel evenly over the bottom; set the pan aside.
To Make the Flan:
-Bring the milk and heavy cream just to a boil.
-Meanwhile, in a 2-quart glass measuring cup or in a bowl, whisk together the eggs, yolks and sugar. Whisk vigorously for a minute or two, and then stir in the vanilla. Still whisking, drizzle in about one quarter of the hot liquid-this will temper, or warm, the eggs so they won’t curdle. Whisking all the while, slowly pour in the remainder of the hot cream and milk. Using a large spoon, skim off the bubbles and foam that you worked up.
-Put the caramel-lined cake pan in the roasting pan. Pour the custard into the cake pan and slide the setup into the oven. Very carefully pour enough hot water from the kettle into the roasting pan to come halfway up the sides of the cake pan. (Don’t worry if this sets the cake pan afloat.) Bake the flan for about 35 minutes, or until the top puffs a bit and is golden here and there. A knife inserted into the center of the flan should come out clean. (Small, individual molds will take less time– start checking for doneness around the 25-minute mark).
-Remove the roasting pan from the oven, transfer the cake pan to a cooking rack and run a knife between the flan and the sides of the pan to loosen it. Let the flan cool to room temperature on the rack, then loosely cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
-When ready to serve, once more, run a knife between the flan and the pan. Choose a rimmed serving platter, place the platter over the cake pan, quickly flip the platter and pan over and remove the cake pan–the flan will shimmy out and the caramel sauce will coat the custard.
Storing: Covered with plastic wrap in its baking pan, the flan will keep in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. However, once unmolded, its best to enjoy it the same day.
Serving: Bring the flan to the table and cut into wedges. Spoon some of the syrup onto each plate.
Playing Around– Caramel-topped coconut flan: For a more tropical flan with a somewhat lighter texture, replace the heavy cream with a 15-oz can of unsweetened coconut milk and reduce the amount of milk to 1 cup.
Tuesdays with Dorie: Brioche Raisin Snails
March 18, 2008 at 2:48 am | Posted in breakfast things, groups, sweet things, sweet yeast breads, tuesdays with dorie | 32 Comments
Ah yes, it’s that day of the week again, and Peabody has chosen Dorie’s Brioche Raisin Snails as the recipe for this round of TWD. I imagine this would be an ideal breakfast treat, but R & I moved faster than a speeding snail and ate them for dessert just a few hours after I made them.
Actually this recipe is a few recipes in one, beginning with brioche dough. It’s not hard to make (especially if you have a stand mixer to do the dirty-work for you), but requires a some time and patience, as it needs to spend a night in the fridge before it’s ready to shape. I strayed from Dorie’s advice in her opener for Golden Brioche Loaves (which is the base for the snails) and did half a recipe…it came out just fine. Once the brioche dough has had its beauty sleep, it’s rolled out and smeared with pastry cream (I don’t think I’ve ever baked pastry cream before!) and rum-flamed raisins. I said last time that I am not a raisin fan, so here I used dried cherries in lieu, as I knew they’d be nice with the rum. Then it gets rolled up and sliced into rounds– hence the whole “snail” thing.
Like I said, we ate these the day they were made, and they were really nice…soft and slightly boozy. Of course I glazed them, which Dorie says is optional (but in my books is mandatory). I only turned a portion of my dough into snails…I froze the rest as Pecan Honey Sticky Buns for another time. Yum!
You can find the recipe on Peabody’s site (her version includes a few yummy-looking modifications to the original) or in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. And head over to the Tuesdays with Dorie space to see all the other snails crawling around the blogosphere.
P.S.: I’ll be on vacation by the time you see this. I’m not sure about the internet situation, as I’ll be a tourist in lands unknown to me…so if I can’t comment on your posts for a few weeks, please forgive me!
Blogging by Mail– Thanks, Amy!
March 14, 2008 at 9:03 pm | Posted in events | Leave a comment
There was major excitement yesterday when I went to the post office to pick up a box, and it turned out to be my Blogging by Mail package! Amy from Tart Reform sent along a bunch of goodies to remind me of the States. She put together a great box, containing:
-Reece’s cups (an all-time favorite of mine!)
-Jolly Ranchers (I haven’t had one in years, and went straight for the best flavor– watermelon!)
-strawberries & cream cheeseball and dessert mix (what could this be??)
-animal crackers
-a Maryland candy bar
-a CD from a band called Damone (I don’t know them, so I’m excited to give it a try!)
-a postcard of the Capitol building (that makes me a little homesick–I spent the first 17 years of my life in the DC suburbs on the Virginia side of the Potomac)
Thank you, Amy! I have a great selection of snacks to last me awhile! And thanks so much to Stephanie from Dispensing Happiness, who organized this event, and I know spent hours, if not days, matching up bloggers from around the world! Little things do mean a lot, and this was great fun!
Tuesdays with Dorie: Russian Grandmothers’ Apple Pie-Cake
March 11, 2008 at 12:02 am | Posted in cakes & tortes, groups, pies & tarts, simple cakes, sweet things, tuesdays with dorie | 43 Comments
Natalie from Burned Bits chose Russian Grandmothers’ Apple Pie-Cake as our Tuesdays with Dorie recipe of the week. I love apple pie and I love cake, so this one sounded great, even though I didn’t really know what to expect from it. Made from dough like a pie, but bakes up like a cake– huh?? Dorie doesn’t have a photo in her book to help me out (although she does have a nice story about the recipe), so I’d just have to see this paradox for myself.
It wasn’t hard to make– two layers of crust sandwich a cinnamony apple filling. When the “pie” bakes, the crusts poof up, and it really does become cake-like. It’s a really rustic dessert–all lumpy and bumpy and browned on top. And it’s really good…tonight I will be dreaming about eating it for breakfast!
I did make a couple of changes. Dorie uses raisins in her recipe, but I’m not too fond of them so I substituted dried cranberries instead. Also, I wanted to make half a recipe, which is a more manageable amount for us, and my 8-inch square glass pan worked perfectly.
You can find the recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours or on Burned Bits. And check out the posts from the other Tuesdays with Dorie members!
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