TWD: Rugelach

Ok so let me tell you about something I really really hate: cream cheese. I hate cream cheese- I really really hate it- and I almost never use the word hate. I reserve it for things like cream cheese. I hate cheesecake, I hate cream cheese based dips, I hate cream cheese frosting on carrot cake (I love the cake part), and I really hate it on bagels (why ruin a perfectly good breakfast?). So this, my friends, is why I have never ever tasted rugelach before last night. I was so prejudiced against these beautiful cookies simply because the dough is made up of flour, butter, and you guessed it: cream cheese. But, I have great news! These cookies do not taste like cream cheese- even the cream cheese lovers in my life couldn't detect it's presence! Imagine all the years I've been missing out on these sweet little babies! The horror, the horror!


This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Piggy of Piggy's Cooking Journal. Thank you piggy! You have allowed me to become a more accepting and loving individual! I can no longer say that I hate cream cheese (well at least not with the same passion that I used to). Dorie's recipe is very easy- it is a bit time consuming because you have to refrigerate the dough after you make it and then again after you form the cookies- but the effort is well worth results.


I went ahead and used almost the exact filling that Dorie recommends: bittersweet chocolate (I used dark chocolate), apricot jam, pecans, cinnamon sugar, and currants (I used golden raisins). I was a little unsure about combining the tartness of the apricot jam and currants with the sweetness of the cinnamon sugar and the chocolatiness of the chocolate- it seemed like a whole lot of flavors for one cookie- but my worries were unfounded. They turned out delicious! I think that I will expirement with the fillings the next time I make these, only because the chocolate overwhelmed the fruit a bit and completely covered up the cinnamon- so I might make some fruit, some cinnamon and pecan, and some chocolate and ground almond next time- just to be able to taste the flavors on their own. And now let me do a little shout out to my new best baking bud- SILICONE BAKING MAT!! How did I live without you for all of these years? You make baked on sugar and crystallized jam slide off a cookie sheet with a gentle nudge! Go out and buy one right now if you don't already have one!


And I leave you with this: All hail Queen Helen Mae! Baby who now awakens at 4:45 am each morning (thanks to Daylight Savings Time) and wishes to go down for a nap at approximately 6:00am!

Happy Halloween! Mini- Cupcakes and More!

Ok so it goes something like this- what's cuter than a cake?

A cupcake, right?

What's cuter than a cupcake?

A mini- cupcake, right?


I made these adorable little mini-cupcakes using Martha Stewart's recipe for One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes. I had never used her recipe before and I was very impressed with the results. The cupcakes were light and airy and had a very chocolaty flavor. I can't say that I like them more than Dorie's cupcakes though, because the chocolate didn't have as much depth. These made a lovely little shiny dome at the top- and doesn't that shape just scream cupcake?


The pitfall was when I whipped up the buttercream frosting for the tops. Against my better judgment , I used a buttercream recipe that called for shortening as well as butter. I don't know why I did it, but I can assure you that I will never do it again! The frosting looks pretty and it was easy to work with but when I took a bite of it the consistency was so greasy and the flavor was just not as good as it could have been. Anyway- live and learn. I do need a good buttercream recipe though so if anyone has suggestions please leave me a comment!! I've always used a really basic one with butter and confectioner's sugar and a bit of vanilla and milk- the taste is very nice but it doesn't hold up that well for decorating. They still turned out darn cute so I sent them to school with my high school junior of a sister.


So, what could possibly be cuter than a mini-cupcake?

Ta-Da!

TWD: Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Clara of I Heart Food 4 Thought. With the huge cupcake craze that seems to be permeating every bakery, blog, and bistro (ok not bistros so much but I'm a sucker for alliteration) it's amazing that I haven't baked any up on my own lately.


Alas, those cute little cakes are often less successful for me than regular sized cakes- they end up dry from their small size or oily from the oil that was intended to keep them moist. Many TWD bakers felt that these cupcakes turned out dry and many had to reduce the baking time. Luckily for me, I was not one of those bakers.

My cupcakes went the full baking time and turned out nice and moist. I attribute my success to the thorough mixing instructions that Dorie provides- when she says to beat the sugar and butter for 2 minutes, I set a timer and do it exactly that way. Who knows if this really made a difference- but I always appreciate her detailed instructions and I figure there must be some reason she includes said details.


Like Dorie explains in her description of the recipe, the subtle sweetness of the cupcake and the richness of the chocolate makes these a more grown-up tasting treat. I also had a lot of success with the ganache- just don't expect a sugary, fluffy cloud of frosting- it is a simple and deeply chocolaty ganache.


While I had a little too much fun staging and photographing my cupcakes, Helen Mae ate some little pumpkins and gourds. She can't eat chocolate until she's one year old so I figured that it was a fair trade-off.

Stay tuned for more candy corn fun later this week!

Product Review and Helen Mae Slept Through the Night!

OK so first of all- Helen Mae Rogers, born 8 months ago, slept through the entire night last night- from 8:30 to 6:45. It was the most exciting thing that has happened to me or her since this:
but seriously- my dear baby made it extremely clear from the day of her arrival (and what an arrival it was- 34 hours of unmedicated labor followed by a c-section!) that she did not plan on sleeping by herself in the beautiful brand new bassinet that my dear husband assembled months before her birth. Yes, she slept in our bed, between us for 8 months. Sure it was wonderful to be able to cuddle up with the sweet little snugglebug and feed her 6 + times a night- but the day had come for her to move to her beautiful crib in her own room. So I read up on the Ferber Method and decided that neither she nor I were getting more than 35 minutes of sleep at a time and both of us were becoming more and more sleep deprived. So I nursed her, read her a story, sang 3 lullabies, and placed her in her crib. As I had anticipated, she cried her head off and I tried not to cry my head off as I waited the prescribed two minutes before going in and reassuring her that she was safe and I was nearby. I continued to go in and comfort her first after 1 minute, then 2, then 3, and by 15 minutes (which seemed like a lifetime of torture for me) she fell asleep. She woke 4 times during the night but quickly went back to sleep. On the second night she cried for 30 seconds and slept through the entire night- no joke! I was stunned! I woke up about 4 times out of habit- but she slept, well... like a baby! Anyway, God bless you Dr. Ferber!!! I am like a new woman!
So now for the product review... sorry- not a lot of exciting stuff happens in my life so I get a little carried away when I get to do things like sleep! Williams Sonoma- my favorite cooking store (which I can almost never afford to shop at) has these little leaf pie cutters- for Fall pies. Umm...adorable! They work really well because they cut the shape out of the dough and then you stamp the little button down and it cuts the little indentations into the leaves which bake up beautifully. I used the leaves on this little raspberry jam tartlette which I made with a store bought pie crust- this is honestly my very first experience with store bought roll-out pie crust (my mother is a firm believer in baking from scratch) and it was OK but I can really taste the difference. Anyway, I loved the little piecutters- I will use them on a big homemade crust apple pie sometime soon! Oh and p.s. how cute is this?

TWD: Spiced Biscotti

I was sort of disappointed when I saw that this week's Tuesday's With Dorie was Lenox Almond Biscotti selected by Gretchen from Canela & Cominol (you can find the recipe on her site). I always think of biscotti as dry and considerably hard-BUT- I was also a little bit excited because I am absolutely positive that I never would have ever picked this recipe to try out on my own! A part of me knew that there has to be some reason that people like biscotti- some reason that coffee shops always carry the little rock-hard suckers...and... there is! Homemade, fresh biscotti is DELICIOUS! Really! It's like the difference between an old stale store brand chocolate flavored chip cookie and homemade chocolate chunk cookie.


I didn't have almonds so I made a spiced version using 1/2 tsp apple pie spice, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, and 1/2 vanilla in place of the almond extract. My logs looked great after the first bake and I was able to slice them easily for the second bake.


After they cooled I made an almond glaze using milk, powdered sugar, and a little tiny bit of almond extract. I didn't use any measurements I just kind of eyeballed it- the desired consistency will drip like this off a spoon.


I am very pleased with this recipe and I can't wait to try all the variations that Dorie suggests!


And I will leave you with some pictures of Helen Mae dressed up as a puppy- random- but extremely cute- my husband's not bad either!

TWD: Caramel Peanut- Topped Brownie Cake

YAY! This is my first Tuesdays with Dorie post! I have been wanting to join this group of bakers for awhile- I always get really excited on Tuesdays because they all post such beautiful pictures of their weekly bake from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Well last week I went out to Barnes and Noble and (using my husband's gift card which he received for his birthday-bad wife!) purchased my very own copy of the exquisite and very heavy cookbook.

This week's recipe was selected by Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy and you can find the recipe for Caramel Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake on her blog. I, like so many other TWD bakers, was pretty nervous when I saw that this week's recipe involved homemade caramel as the star component of the cake. I watched my mom make caramel once for a caramel pie and I all that I remember is that it involved a water bath, a candy thermometer, and a lot of sweating. Well, I am happy to report that this was nothing like that!


The cake was very easy and straightforward to throw together. It really tastes and feels like a brownie- it is a little drier though- but I feel like that is on purpose so that it can support the weight of all of those peanuts covered in caramel (it also soaks up a bit of the hot caramel- heaven!).
Here's the big surprise- the caramel part was easy too! Now I'll be honest- I watched the sugar like HAWK! I never left the stovetop. And it took about 27 minutes (not 5-10 as Dorie suggests) to turn to the desired deep amber color.


I was so pleased with the flavor, texture, and lovely color! The cake got rave reviews from everyone who tasted it- I will definitely be making this again- it would be great to serve for dessert at a dinner party.

My idea of a perfect date...square

Last Saturday I woke up late.


Just kidding, I haven't slept in for the last seven months.

But seriously, I did at least stay in my pajamas late, even if Helen Mae and I were not sleeping. So here we were in our pajamas at about 11am- I was looking through cookbooks and Helen Mae was chewing on a spatula.


Like I mentioned earlier I have a giant tub of chopped dates and now I'm looking everywhere for date recipes- so when I stumbled upon this lovely recipe from Cookies, irresistible biscuits, brownies, and bars by Hilaire Walden I decided to fumble through the kitchen and see if I could make it without having to change into real clothes and go to the grocery store. The recipe is called Date Crunch- but it honestly was not crunchy in any way- I would have called it Date Chew- but let's face it- that would be a very odd name and also not so appealing- so I'm calling them Chewy Chocolate Topped Date Bars. They were oh so easy to make and I had all of the ingredients in the house (except raisins-the ones in my pantry had expired in 2006). The bars were really good- they had a very clear date flavor that went really well with the semi-sweet chocolate (umm, what doesn't go well with chocolate?). Here is the recipe with my changes in parentheses:

Date Crunch (Chewy Chocolate Topped Date Bars)

8 oz package of graham crackers (I used graham cracker crumbs because that was all I had in the house- but I think crushing your own graham crackers might allow you to how a "crunchier" Date Crunch so I will use whole crackers next time and crush them myself)
1/3 cup butter
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 cup pitted dates, finely chopped (I use a little over a whole cup since I omitted the raisins)
3 oz golden raisins (I omitted these because I didn't have any- but I think they would really taste great in these bars)
5 oz milk or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used semisweet chocolate chips- and just between you and me, I used quite a bit more than 5 oz)

Line a 7 inch square shallow cake pan with foil. Put the crackers in a plastic bag and crush coarsely with a rolling pin. Gently heat the butter and syrup in a small saucepan until the butter has melted. Stir in the crushed crackers, the dates and golden raisins and mix well. Spoon into the prepared pan, press flat with the back of a spoon and chill for 1 hour (I really pressed these down firmly and I left them in the fridge for about 2 hours).


Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl, over a saucepan of hot water, stirring until smooth (I melted the chocolate chips in the microwave on low). Spoon over the cookie mixture, spreading evenly with a spatula. Chill until set (I let mine sit in the fridge for about an hour). Lift the foil out of the cake pan and peel away. Cut the crunch into 24 pieces and arrange on a plate (you can arrange them in a ridiculous tower if you want to).