salted caramel brownies

Caramel is my nemesis, and I get it right only about 50% of the time. Yet, I keep at it, hoping to perfect it and also because sometimes I have a hankering for caramel brownies and just can't bring myself to make them with store bought caramels or caramel sauce (though I will confess that I had a moment of weakness and desperation and almost caved and bought the Ghirardelli caramel turtle brownie mix). 

Anyway, I made salted caramel brownies, from the Smitten Kitchen blog. As expected, I messed up the caramel before getting it right. Turns out that it needs your undivided attention and you can't multitask and make granola at the same time. 

I'm so glad I didn't cave and buy the mix. These brownies are super good, and while I kind of wish I could share them with you, I kind of like having them (almost) all to myself (I do have to share with Drew).

chocolate chip cookie dough layer cake

A week and a half ago, after spending nearly an entire year in China, Drew came home. 

To welcome him home, I baked a chocolate chip cookie dough layer cake. The cake layers are a white cake, and the frosting is a vanilla French buttercream. Both recipes are from Baking Illustrated. The filling is a chocolate chip cookie dough, from Bite Me More.

This cake is quite a showstopper. It was very good and quite possibly the best cake I've ever made. It might even be better than the Brown Butter Pumpkin Layer Cake I made a few years ago, which is the cake against which I measure all other cakes, but I can't decide. 

devil's food cake with whipped cream and strawberries

Do you remember that movie with Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal? Stranger Than Fiction? I forget what it's about, and all I remember is this scene where Ferrell courts Gyllenhaal (a law student turned baker) with a bunch of flours. Not flowers, but flours. Get it? Very clever.

I am reminded of this scene because I am slowly whittling away my own flour collection. So far, I've managed to use up rye flour, hazelnut flour, and whole wheat pastry flour, but self rising flour, Italian 00 flour, chickpea flour, almond flour, whole wheat flour, and of course, all purpose flour, remain. And until yesterday, there was cake flour.    

My running friends ran a 10K this morning. I skipped out on the race but met up with them for a potluck-birthday-celebration-brunch. Whenever we have potlucks, I am in charge of dessert.  

The birthday girl requested chocolate and strawberries, and so I delivered. I was on the fence, going back and forth between the recipe from Chocolate Cakes or Baking Illustrated. I went with the former, largely because it meant using up the rest of my cake flour. The filling is from the Pioneer Woman. 

I snapped this picture before heading over to my friend's place, and it was a good thing I did. As I assembled the cake, I thought to myself "There is no way this is going to survive the 20 minute drive to Laguna Niguel." And I was right. Just as I accelerated to get onto the 405, a guy began to cross in front of me, on foot, forcing me to slam on my brakes. Fortunately, he took about 2 steps and then turned back, but it was still a little unnerving. It is generally a good idea to look both ways before darting across a freeway entrance (or really, any street). 

Anyway, the top cake layer slid off the bottom one, but nobody cared about the presentation. The cake was nice and tender, and everyone loved it.     

at long last

It's been a while, I know, but I have a good excuse. I was on the academic job market last fall, and it was crazy busy. But don't worry, I made time to eat. My goal was to cook simple meals and not rely on pre-packaged garbage or take out, and I was mostly successful. Last night, I scrolled through the pictures on my phone and found these highlights:

Apparently, I made fried egg sandwiches one day. I believe that the biscuit recipe is from the Smitten Kitchen, but I'm not very good at biscuit making so I didn't do them justice. 

I also made a red lentil and broccoli curry, from Veganomican. The original recipe calls for cauliflower, but I'm not a fan, hence the broccoli.

I also made fettuccine and meatballs. The sauce is a butter-roasted tomato sauce from Bon Appetit, and so is the meatball recipe. I made the fettuccine (my reward after returning from a campus interview--fresh pasta is the best!) from Food 52's feature on Mario Batali. 

Let's see, what else? I was on a veggie burger kick and made these beet burgers, from the Post Punk Kitchen. They were super good, but messy to make. I shredded the beets in the food processor and I got beet juice everywhere--the counters and floor--and the kitchen looked like a crime scene.

I also made a butternut squash and cheddar galette, from A Year of Pies.

I was able to make some time for baking, beginning with pumpkin whoopie pies, from either Baked: New Frontiers in Baking or Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Revisited. 

For Christmas, I made Funfetti cookies.

And chocolate peppermint cookies from Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients. 

 And rugelach from Baking Out Loud: Fun Desserts with Big Flavors.

I know I cooked other stuff last fall, and the lack of photographic evidence doesn't mean it didn't taste good enough to share. It just means that I was too hungry and impatient to take a few seconds and document it. 

raspberry cheesecake brownies

I love cheesecake brownies, but oddly, I don't make them that often. I had a craving for them last week and so I had to make them. The recipe is from Baking Illustrated, and the raspberry addition is my own (I dolloped raspberry jam alongside the cream cheese mixture). These are really good, but there's just not enough cream cheese mixture, but fortunately, the raspberry jam makes up for it,  

chocolate kahlua cake

I don't know how this happened, but somehow, I ended up with a bottle of Kahlua. I don't know where it came from. Maybe leftover from a party a long time ago? 

I do know, however, how I ended up with rum, amaretto, brandy, and hazelnut liqueur. Sometimes I bake with booze*, but I end up with a lot of leftovers because 1) recipes don't call for that much alcohol and 2) Drew and I don't really drink at home (unless it's wine for me). 

But back to the mystery Kahlua. 

As I mentioned in the previous post, I'm moving and I'm trying to clean out the kitchen. I tasted the Kahlua, and it was still good (full disclosure: I tasted it after drinking a glass of wine), so I decided that I had to use it. I did some quick browsing on the internet to see what kinds of things I could bake with Kahlua. I came across this recipe, and while I normally don't just dive into recipes by unknown blogs (uh, unknown by me, that is) without some sleuthing, I made an exception because it called for 3/4 of a cup of Kahlua, and guess what? That's exactly how much Kahlua I had. 

It was fate.

Or destiny.

Or whatever.

The Collegiate Baker's recipe is for a layer cake with frosting and chocolate curls, which looks lovely, but I made mini cakes instead because they are easier to share. As I was mixing the ingredients, I thought to myself "This better be good; I'm using the fancy cocoa powder!" And it was; the Kahlua was subtle, and the cake was rich and chocolate-y.

*I bake with bourbon too, but I must bake with it more frequently because there never seem to be leftovers. 

thanksgiving in june

Tomorrow night, Drew is headed to China to spend a year doing his dissertation research. Though we'll miss each other (I plan to visit in September and December), it is an exciting time for the both of us. This is a great opportunity for Drew- I mean, how many people can say they've spent a significant time in another country? And as for me, it will be a busy time as I finish my dissertation, do my own dissertation fieldwork, and apply for jobs. 

Living in China for a year means that Drew is missing out on some important holidays...like my birthday. 

Wait, what's that you say? That's not a national holiday? 

Okay, but aside from my birthday, Drew is missing out on some other holidays. For the most part, I don't think he's bothered by this, but it bothers me that he'll be missing out on Thanksgiving. I recognize that Thanksgiving is not without controversy. I actually attempted to read an academic book on its history, but it was boring and I stopped after 10 pages. Plus, in the introduction, the author basically said that we don't know what the first Thanksgiving was like, so, satisfied that I was not inadvertently celebrating the murder of American Indians, it made it easier to stop reading (um, to be clear, I know that happened, but if an academic can't find evidence that Thanksgiving is rooted in this, then it may not exist).

Anyhow, what really matters to me is the Thanksgiving food. I'm not much of a turkey girl, but I can practically eat my weight in stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. So last night, Drew and I had our own Thanksgiving. We made a seitan roast, stuffed with leeks and shitakes. 

It was easy to make (we made it up a few days beforehand) and I think this will become our new Thanksgiving staple. We also made stuffing:

And green bean casserole, but I had to fight for this one. You see, green bean casserole is usually made with canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and french fried onions. I'm a big fan, though I make it with fresh green beans and not canned, but Drew is not. But I assured him that he'd like a homemade green bean casserole, and I was right. I used Alton Brown's recipe, which I watched him make on an episode of his show Good Eats years ago. At first, this dish seems high maintenance, but it's really not. You mix up sliced onions with panko and flour and bake them until crispy for about a half an hour. While that's baking, you blanch green beans and make the mushroom soup. It will all take longer than opening up a bunch of cans and mixing up their contents, but it's completely worth it.   

Of course, we had to have mashed potatoes. These are really simple, just butter and sour cream.

Here's what the full plate looks like:

Even though I don't think it's really Thanksgiving unless I eat pumpkin pie, I conceded and made a chocolate cream pie instead. Drew does not share my enthusiasm for pumpkins, and this was his request. I was happy to comply; after all, I did get green bean casserole on the menu, and I'll get to bake with pumpkins all I want this fall.   

The recipe is from Ashley English's A Year of Pies. I like this cookbook, and I suspect I'll use it more often this fall, which I consider to be pie season (despite it being called A Year of Pies).

Our Thanksgiving was successful, and we were satisfied. We decided that if we ever host Thanksgiving, we're totally going to rock at it. We also realized that there is a reason people grill for summer holidays-it gets too hot in the kitchen! 

triple chocolate brownies

Last weekend, Drew and I went to Surfas, this restaurant supply store. To us, it was like being kids in a candy store. We walked up and down every aisle, and we even ate lunch in the café. In addition to selling merchandise such as dishes, pots, and pans, Surfas also sold gourmet food products that aren't found in normal grocery stores. We found fancy pastas, cheeses, spices, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate.

 

We splurged on Vahlrona cocoa powder and Callebaut semi sweet chocolate. All the different brands and types of chocolate are sold as cocoa powder, discs, chips, and blocks. Even 10 pound blocks.

We were sensible and did not purchase 10 pounds of chocolate, and instead we got the more reasonable one pound block.

 

When we got home, I immediately made brownies. The recipe is from Baking Illustrated (from the geniuses behind the magazine Cooks Illustrated), and it calls for 3 kinds of chocolate: unsweetened, semi sweet, and cocoa powder.

These are quite possibly the best brownies ever. They're nice and fudgy, and they have a perfectly crackly top. Drew and I decided that splurging on good quality chocolate was totally worth it. Though we could not detect an appreciable difference between the Callebaut chocolate and the blocks we get from Trader Joe's, we could easily tell that the Vahlrona cocoa powder, which smelled almost smoky when I opened it, not surprisingly proved to be much better than Hershey's or Trader Joe's (which is probably the same thing anyway).

 

In 10 days, Drew is leaving tp spend a year in China. Until then, I will be baking with chocolate. Lots of it. 

oatmeal fudge bars

There is a coffee shop on the Virginia Tech campus called Bollo's, and I make sure to patronize it every time Drew and I go to Blacksburg.  I don't think Drew is as enchanted with Bollo's as I am, because I have the feeling he didn't really go there when he was a student at Virginia Tech.  

Maybe I love Bollo's because the only coffee shops within walking distance of UCI are Peet's and Starbucks, which are serviceable, but lack personality.  Maybe I love it because it reminds me of my favorite coffee shops I frequented as a student at the University of Minnesota: Espresso Expose and the Purple Onion.  Maybe I love Bollo's because I adore the oatmeal fudge bars.  They're simple, but really quite good.  And they're not a muffin or a danish, which is usually what you find at coffee shops.  And they're homemade, or if they're not, Bollo's has me fooled.

I never actively searched for an oatmeal fudge bar recipe so that I could make my own, but I stumbled upon one last spring.  I made them for a friend's dissertation defense, and they were a big hit.  The other day, I found myself thinking about them, but after spending an embarrassing amount of time searching for the recipe (which I think came from Bon Appetit or Food & Wine), I could not locate it.  

And so I had to resort to something I don't like doing, which is taking my chances and using a recipe from a random food blog.  It's not that I dislike food blogs or trying new recipes from the internet.  The problem is that since anyone can post a recipe or have a blog, I don't know which ones are good and which ones are bad.  I have my trusty food blogs and am hesitant to try recipes from other sources, but after some sleuthing, I found one to try, from the Beantown Baker.   

I made these bars for a different friend's dissertation defense, which means that these might become the "dissertation defense bars."  And fortunately, they were a big hit, just like the last time I made them.