The Original Chocolate Chip Cookie {Bake!}

March 19, 2011 at 7:05 pm (Bake!, Cookies, Nick Malgieri, Recipes, Twitterbake)
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This week’s Bake! recipe was chosen by Andrea. Leave it to a German to pick that most American of recipes, chocolate chip cookies!

According to legend these cookies were invented by dietician Ruth Wakefield who, along with her husband, owned and operated a Massachusetts inn known as the Toll House. Ruth tried to convert her brown sugar cookie recipe into chocolate cookies by adding chocolate chunks to the batter. She thought the chunks would melt into the dough, resulting in a chocolate cookie. And the rest is history.

The recipe in Nick’s book is derived from Ruth Wakefield’s original recipe. The only differences are that the baking soda isn’t dissolved in water, which is unneccessary, and Nick’s recipe uses chocolate chips rather than chocolate chunks. This is also the same as the back of the bag Toll House cookie recipe, with two exceptions: the original recipe called for two cups of nuts rather than one; and the cookies are baked for 12- 14 minutes, a bit longer than today’s recipe. This results in slightly crisper cookies but ones that taste just like what you’re used to.

I baked this recipe with the girls, who are always up for cookies. Here they are scooping out dough.

And here are the cookies ready for the oven.

I didn’t end up getting a picture of the finished product. But they look like any other chocolate chip cookie you’ve seen, just a bit on the crispy side.

These were really good, and I would reach for this recipe if I needed a quick reminder of the Toll House recipe. I left out the nuts, as the kids don’t like them in cookies. And I would remember to bake them for less time so they stay soft.

12 Comments

Golden Almond Bars {Bake!}

March 13, 2011 at 6:39 am (Bake!, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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Our latest Twitterbake from Nick Malgieri’s Bake! was chosen by Abby, although I think she may have been channeling Kayte, who has been talking about this recipe since she got the book. Once I tasted them, I knew why. These bars were so good!

To make these bars, I began by mixing up a recipe of sweet pastry dough, which is simply flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, and eggs pulsed together in the food processor. I made the dough the day before I planned to bake the bars, wrapped it well in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge.

The next day, I took the pastry dough out of the refrigerator, whacked it a few times with a  rolling pin to soften it, then rolled it out to fit the pan. I transferred the dough to the pan, which I had prepared by lining with buttered parchment paper. After pressing the dough into the pan and trimming the top, I put the pan in the refrigerator to chill while I made the filling.

The filling was easy to make. I melted butter in a pan, added sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt, then stirred in cream. I cooked the mixture for a minute, then added the almonds. After stirring everything together, I dumped it into the prepared crust and spread it around.

I baked the bars for about 30 minutes, until the crust was done through, the syrup bubbling, and the almonds well toasted. I cooled the bars on a rack for an hour, then unmolded them from the pan, peeled away the parchment, and cut the bars into 2-inch squares.

The bars were wonderful — tender, moist, slightly chewy, with a nice, toasty crunch from the slivered almonds. The whole family enjoyed them, which was a good thing. Otherwise, I might have eaten them all myself.

6 Comments

Danish Cheese Pockets {Bake!}

March 5, 2011 at 9:48 pm (Bake!, Nick Malgieri, Tarts & Pies, Twitterbake)
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For a recent Twitterbake, my friend Margaret chose Danish Cheese Pockets from Bake!, Nick Malgieri’s recent book. The recipe calls for a half recipe of Quick Danish Pastry Dough. Rather than making a half recipe or freezing some of the dough, I decided to make two recipes — one of cheese pockets and another with cherry filling made from homemade cherry jam a friend of mine gave me.

After making the pastry dough, I  mixed up the cream cheese filling.

Isn't the sugar-coated egg yolk cool?

 

I rolled out the dough, cut it into squares, topped it with filling, and shaped the Danish.

I did the same with the cherry Danish, making some just cherry and some cheese and cherry.

After shaping the Danish, I preheated the oven. While the oven was heating, I brushed the tops of the Danish with egg wash and sprinkled them with sliced almonds.

I baked the pastries at 400°F for about 20 minutes, until they were puffed and golden.

Even though most of the Danish came apart on top, they were still delicious. The cream cheese ones were as good as any cheese Danish I’ve ever tasted.

And the cherry and cherry-cheese ones were even better.

I had planned to take most of the Danish to work, but by the time Monday rolled around, there weren’t very many left. The Danish I did take to the office disappeared with lightning speed. One person asked me for the recipe. The rest asked me to make more Danish and bring them in.

12 Comments

Florida Brownies {Bake!}

February 20, 2011 at 3:48 pm (Bake!, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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A few weeks ago, M needed a treat to take to a Superbowl party. It just so happened that I was baking these brownies from Nick Malgieri‘s Bake! that weekend, so it worked out perfectly.

This was a very simple and straightforward recipe. The ingredients were butter, unsweetened chocolate, eggs, vanilla, salt, sugar, and flour.

For some reason, I tend to pass over recipes that call for baking chocolate in favor of those that use cocoa. This is beginning to change, thanks in large part to Nick. Watching him bake at a recent cooking class, as well as reading and baking his recipes, has made me realize that baking chocolate is actually pretty easy to work with, and the results are far superior to what you get using only cocoa or chocolate chips.

I began by meting the butter, then adding the chocolate to the pan off the heat. While the chocolate was melting, I whisked together the eggs, vanilla, and salt, then whisked in the sugar. I beat the sugar mixture in the electric mixer until it was very light and fluffy — about 10 minutes. I whisked the butter and chocolate, then added it to the sugar and mixed gently. I added the flour and mixed just until it was all combined.

I scraped the batter into a pan lined with buttered foil, then baked the brownies in a 375°F oven for about 35 minutes. I cooled the brownies for a bit, then unmolded them to a cutting board and cut them into 2-inch squares.

I plated most of the brownies for M to take to her party, but of course kept some at home, too. I’m a big fan of fudgy brownies, but these were more cakey than fudgy. They were still delicious — among the best cake-like brownies I’ve tasted. And they were a hit at the party, too, as evidenced by the empty plate M brought home.

10 Comments

Individual Coconut Cakes {Bake!}

January 18, 2011 at 6:59 am (Bake!, Muffins, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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It was Kayte‘s turn to pick our Twitterbake recipe this week, and she surprised us all by choosing something other than a lemon-based recipe. Of course, once I read the ingredients, which included grated lemon zest, I was no longer in shock. She loves coconut, too, so I guess it’s the perfect recipe for her to have chosen.

This seemed like a strange recipe to me as I read over it. For 24 mini-muffin size cakes, it only calls for 1/2 cup flour. There are four egg whites, so as first I thought it would be more like a meringue. But as I read the recipe, I saw that the egg whites are only lightly beaten, not whipped into peaks. Puzzled but curious, I started to mix up the ingredients.

In one bowl I mixed sugar, flour, and coconut. The recipe called for unsweetened coconut. I looked in the cupboard and had no less than six bags of coconut, all sweetened. I wasn’t about to buy more coconut until I used some of this up, so I used what I had and cut the sugar back a bit.

In a separate bowl I whisked the egg whites and a pinch of salt until smooth, then mixed in lemon zest and melted butter. After this was well mixed, I whisked in half of the flour mixture, then folded in the rest. I spooned the batter into mini muffin pans. I got 24 minis, each about 3/4 full. After filling the tins, I topped each cupcake with a pinch of shredded coconut.

I baked the cakes for 15 minutes at 375°F, until they were slightly puffed and the coconut was nicely toasted.

These mini cakes were delicious! I didn’t measure the lemon zest — I just zested the lemon right over the bowl — and I think I probably ended up with more than the recipe called for, as my cakes were more yellow than those pictured in the book. But I didn’t mind the extra lemon flavor at all. Combined with the coconut, the lemon gave these cupcakes a wonderful, fresh flavor. It was lighter than I expected and paired perfectly with a cup of afternoon coffee.

Our Twitterbake is a casual affair. Several of us who have Nick Malgieri‘s most recent book, Bake!, get together virtually every week or so to try a new recipe from the book. We bake. We Tweet. Sometimes we blog. Mostly we just have fun trying new recipes. 

If you have Bake! and want to join us, jump right in. We’ll even let you pick your first recipe.

3 Comments

Vanilla Bean Pound Cake {Bake!}

January 11, 2011 at 7:24 am (Bake!, Bread Baking, Cake, Nick Malgieri, Recipes, Twitterbake)
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After the fun of our recent Twitterbake and my success with the New Orleans Praline Pound Cake from Nick Malgieri‘s new book, Bake!, I decided to try another one of Nick’s pound cake recipes. There are six pound cake variations in addition to the basic recipe in the book. And I was so excited to try another one that I mixed this one up while the praline pound cake was in the oven.

This version starts with the basic pound cake recipe — flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and lemon zest. The only change called for in the recipe is replacing the vanilla with the seeds of a vanilla bean. I made one other change: I replaced the lemon zest with a few drops of orange oil. This batter was light and fluffy, although it didn’t beat up quite as high as the New Orleans Praline Pound Cake. I spread the batter in the pan and smoothed the top.

I baked the pound cake in a 325°F oven for about an hour. Unlike the praline pound cake, which took almost 75 minutes to bake, this one baked in 60 minutes, as indicated by the recipe. I let the pound cake cool before slicing it.

New Orleans Praline Pound Cake (left); Vanilla Bean Pound Cake (right)

As you can see from the photo above, the vanilla bean pound cake didn’t bake up as high as the praline version. Nonetheless, is was light, airy, and absolutely delicious. The vanilla flavor could have been stronger, but that may have been owing to my vanilla bean, which was a bit on the dry side. I really liked the addition of the orange flavoring to the batter, and will probably make that a regular alteration to the recipe.

I mentioned my love of pound cake in the previous post and pointed out that Nick’s praline pound cake recipe stood up to any other recipe I had tried. The vanilla bean pound cake was every bit as good as the praline version.

And now I can’t wait to try the rest of them.

7 Comments

New Orleans Praline Pound Cake {Bake!}

January 8, 2011 at 6:08 am (Bake!, Cake, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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About a week ago, I Tweeted that I was sweeted out and ready for some savory recipes. So, of course when it came to my turn to choose a recipe for our Twitterbake from Nick Malgieri‘s latest book, Bake!, I chose pound cake!

I’m a big fan of pound cake, so I’ve tried a lot of recipes. One of my favorites comes from a cookbook I picked up in New Orleans about 18 years ago. It’s also one of the simplest pound cake recipes I’ve ever made. And that’s been true of the best pound cake recipes I’ve found: they are simple, straightforward, and result in a cake that it moist, flavorful, and not overly heavy.

So, I was excited to try Nick’s pound cake recipe. Recipes, in fact. He offers a basic recipe, called High-Ratio Pound Cake, and six variations. One of those variations, New Orleans Praline Pound Cake, piqued my interest, so that’s the one I chose for our Twitterbake.

First, a little history. Pound cake got its name from the volume of its four main ingredients. A classic pound cake — the one your great-great-grandmother used to make — called for one pound each of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. As you can imagine, this resulted in a huge cake. As family sizes began to shrink, home cooks altered the recipe to make a smaller cake. As long as they kept the ratios the same, they could adjust the size of the cake to suit their needs. Sounds a lot like baker’s math, huh?

The basic pound cake batter is just that — basic. Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and lemon zest. And even the praline variation was simple. A bit of brown sugar substituted for some of the granulated sugar, and some cinnamon, a few tablespoons of dark rum or bourbon, and a cup of pecans added to the batter.

When I had mixed up the batter, I was surprised at how light and fluffy it was. Pound cake batter is usually heavier, almost doughy, so I was anxious to see how the cake would turn out.

Just before adding the batter to the prepared pan, I folded in the pecans. As you can see in the picture above, I tossed the pecans with a small amount of flour before folding them into the batter. The recipe instruct you to do this, but doesn’t say why. The reason is that it keeps the pecans from sinking to the bottom of the loaf. Once I folded in the pecans, I scraped the batter into the pan and smoothed the top a bit.

I baked the loaf in a 325°F oven for about 75 minutes, until the tip of a knife inserted in the center of the loaf came out clean. I cooled the loaf in the pan for a few minutes, then removed it to a rack to cool completely.

This loaf rose like crazy. It puffed up so high above the top of the pan that it looked almost like a soufflé.

The praline loaf is in the back in this picture. The other loaf is a vanilla bean loaf that I mixed up while the praline pound cake was baking.

As I sliced into the loaf, I thought it looked a bit like a nut bread. But don’t let looks fool you. This was definitely a pound cake. The praline flavor was subtle and delicious. It didn’t overpower the classic pound cake flavor, but rather complemented it beautifully.

I want to try the basic pound cake recipe and a few more of the variations. But based on this recipe, I have to say Nick Malgieri has nailed the pound cake. This is easily one of the best pound cakes I’ve ever had. And it may just replace my tried and true recipe from New Orleans.

6 Comments

Buttermilk Biscuits {Bake!}

January 6, 2011 at 7:49 am (Bake!, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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My friend Kayte and I have been Twitterbaking from Nick Malgieri’s newest book, Bake!, for a month or so now. Margaret has joined us a time or two, and she eventually decided to buy the book. Once she got the book, we let her choose the next recipe, and she picked the buttermilk biscuits on pages 180-81.

I was excited to try this recipe, as I’ve never been particularly successful with biscuits. I’m not sure why, but pastry crust and biscuits are two things that have eluded me in my baking endeavors. Unless I cheat and use Bisquick or those Pillsbury biscuits that come in a can, my biscuits always seem to come out flat. Having seen good results from Nick’s other recipes, I was hopeful that these biscuits would help me break the curse of the hockey pucks and make a biscuit baker out of me.

The recipe is similar to Nick’s pastry dough recipes — the dry ingredients are combined in the food processor, then cold butter is cut in, and finally the liquid is added to bring the dough together. And as with pastry doughs, Nick warns that overworking this dough will result in tough biscuits.

Nick’s approach to shaping the biscuits is geared toward making sure you don’t work the dough too much. Rather than rolling out the dough, you pat it with your hands into a rectangle, give it a letter fold, pat and fold it a second time, then pat it out to cut the biscuits. I liked this approach, because in addition to the dough not getting overworked, the biscuits had a more rustic appearance.

So how did I do in my biscuit baking quest? Well, the first time I made these was a bit rough. For some reason, I grabbed pastry flour instead of AP flour. Pastry flour is much lower in protein, and the biscuits ended up lacking structure. Combine that with the fact that I was baking something else in the oven at the same time at a lower temperature than the biscuit recipe called for, and it’s no surprise that I wound up with very tasty, but kind of flat biscuits.

I made them again the other day, this time using the correct flour and oven temperature, and the result were much better. I still haven’t achieved biscuit nirvana, but I’m several lifetimes closer than I was before I found Nick’s recipe.

4 Comments

Spinach Tart {Bake!}

December 29, 2010 at 11:02 pm (Bake!, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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Kayte, Margaret, and I have been taking turns picking recipes from Nick Malgieri‘s newest book, Bake!. It was Kayte’s turn to pick a recipe, and she chose was one that I had tasted before. Last October, I was fortunate enough to meet Nick Malgieri and take two classes from him at a local cooking school. And his spinach and bacon tart was the first recipe from his new book that we tried.

Kayte, Margaret, and I usually make the recipes “together” via a Twitterbake, but our schedules just didn’t jive this time, so we each made the tart on our own. I made it for dinner on a recent weekday evening when my parents were in town. By the time I got home from work, my sous chef (aka, Mom) had done my mise en place for me, cooking and draining the spinach and measuring out the remaining ingredients. This made the recipe, which is fairly simple anyway, come together very quickly.

After sautéing onions in oil, I added the spinach (I omitted the bacon from the recipe), then stirred in the spices. In addition to the salt, pepper, and nutmeg called for by the recipe, I included a few drops of liquid smoke to emulate the bacon flavor a bit. I added cream, cheese, and eggs, then poured the custard into the tart crust Mom had prepared.

I baked the tart at 375°F for about 35 minutes, cooled it in the pan for a few minutes, then removed it from the tart pan and put in on a serving plate.

The tart was delicious. Not too eggy, the balance of the spinach and spices was perfect. Even my kids, who sometimes turn their noses up at both spinach and quiche-like dishes, really liked it.

This was a quick, easy dish that I could throw together on a work night, even without a sous chef. But I may just wait until Mom’s back in town to make it again.

9 Comments

Tiger (or Giraffe) Rolls {Bake!}

December 5, 2010 at 2:07 am (Bake!, Bread Baking, Nick Malgieri, Twitterbake)
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It was my turn to pick a recipe from Bake! for my weekly Twitterbake with Kayte, and I chose Tiger Rolls on page 69. These rolls are simple and delicious and will become a regular feature on my dinner table. They are really good rolls in their own right, and are taken to another level by the addition of Dutch crumb topping.

To make these rolls, I started by making the One-step Bread Dough on pages 64-65. The dough is made with flour, salt, yeast, water, and oil, which I mixed in a bowl with a rubber spatula.

After the initial mixing, I allowed the dough to rest for 15 minutes, then mixed it again.

I let the dough rest again, then turned it out of the bowl, gave it a stretch and fold, and put it in an oiled bowl to rise.

After a second stretch and fold, I put the dough back in the bowl and allowed it to ferment until it had doubled in volume. At this point the dough was ready to be made into rolls. I turned the dough out onto a floured board and patted it into a rectangle. Using a bench scraper, I cut the dough into 12 pieces. I then shaped the pieces into individual rolls.

I let the rolls rest while I made the topping, consisting of yeast, water, sugar, salt, olive oil, and rice flour. This is a fairly typical Dutch crumb topping, which is spread onto the top of the dough before baking. As the rolls rise in the oven, the topping dries and cracks, creating a mottled effect.

I spread the Dutch crumb on the rolls with a small offset spatula, then set the rolls aside for a final rise.

The rolls proofed for about 45 minutes, until they had nearly doubled in size. While the rolls were proofing, I preheated the oven to 375°F.

I baked the rolls for 25 minutes, until they were well-risen and the topping was lightly browned and crackled.

These rolls were light and airy inside, and the crust had just the right amount of tooth to it. The Dutch crumb topping was slightly sweet, crunchy, and just a bit yeasty. Taken together, these were among the best rolls I’ve ever tasted. I had two of them right after they came out of the oven, and another one or two later in the evening. They were as good at room temperature as they were straight out of the oven.

Nick calls these “Tiger Rolls” because of the appearance of the Dutch crumb topping after it bakes and cracks. Looking at them, I thought they looked more like giraffes than tigers, so I’ve renamed them “Giraffe Rolls”.

The next time I make these rolls, I will scale the dough. I generally scale any dough that I’m going to divide, whether into two loaves or 24 rolls. I didn’t do that with these rolls, which you can tell by looking at a few of the rolls side by side.

OK, so maybe it’s a baby giraffe standing next to its mama. These were fine for a casual weekend family supper, but if I were making them for a dinner party, I would definitely use my kitchen scale to make sure the rolls came out more uniform in size. In any case, they were really delicious and reminded me how much I love Dutch crunch.

This was another successful recipe from Nick Malgieri’s newest book, Bake! If you want a great baking book with lots of techniques and great recipes, you should pick up a copy. If you do, we’d love to have you Twitterbake along with us.

Kayte couldn’t wait to make her next pick, so we are making Spinach & Bacon Tarts tomorrow. So much baking, so little time….

9 Comments

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