Bubble Biscuits? Yes Please!

Several weeks ago my sister asked me about an old Toll House Recipe I used to make called Bubble Biscuits.  I had no idea what she was talking about, but my other sister came the rescue and we found the recipe in my trusty Toll House cookbook.  It's the perfect dessert for your friends with ridiculous allergies because it doesn't use eggs and has just a bit of milk so you can easily make it non-dairy using soy milk or any other milk substitute.  Also, it's delicious.  So that's always a positive.

 To start with you'll need your basic baking supplies.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar, divided
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1 cup chocolate chips
2/3 cup milk or soy milk
1 tsp cinnamon

Obviously start by preheating the oven to 375 degrees.

You'll want your butter to be as cold as possible.  Like making a good crust, cold butter leads to a flakier dough, which we like.  So cut up 1/3 cup of the butter and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so (assuming you have that added patience and time).  Meanwhile mix the flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl.  Cut the frozen butter into the flour mixture:

When you're done it should have a crumbly consistency and look like this:

I got really excited by the next few steps and forgot to take pictures so you'll just have to take a guess of what it looks like.  I'm sure you'll be fine.  Anyway, stir in the chocolate chips and then add milk stirring until the dough holds shape.  Add more flour or milk if necessary to get the right consistency, but at the end it should look like this:

Now take the dough and roll it into 16-18 equal size balls and leave them in the bowl.  Next, you're going to melt the rest of the butter (remaining 1/3 cup) over the stove.

In another bowl (I know, I know, this is yet another recipe with endless bowls) mix the remaining 1/2 cup sugar and cinnamon.  Pour half the melted butter in the bottom of a 9x9 inch square baking pan and sprinkle half the cinnamon/sugar mixture over the butter in the pan.  Now place the balls of dough in 4x4 rows in the butter in the pan and pour the remaining butter over the balls.  Finally sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the very top.  The balls won't be touching in the pan, but they spread out a lot while baking so don't worry.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top and then let cool for a few minutes before eating.  I say let cool because all recipes recommend that so you won't burn your tongue.  But I actually kind of love eating things right out of the oven.  So, on second thought, don't let it cool.  Just don't blame me if it hurts your mouth.

And look, it's just like the picture!

Now go eat and be happy.

Is there a Dr. in the House?

Like I said, this post will be worth your time.  If this is the only post on my blog you ever read, I will be ok with that.  I almost don't want to try to post after this because I just don't know if I can top it in terms of flavor.  That didn't stop me from baking brownies tonight out of sheer boredom, but I didn't even bother taking pictures because it was boring in comparison.  I mean, just look at the ingredients I used for this recipe:

For those of you attempting to repeat this glorious mess at home, the ingredients are:
Cake:
2 cups of sifted flour
2 cups of sugar
1 tsp baking soda
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups low-fat buttermilk (surprisingly, despite the name, buttermilk isn't too bad for you)
1 Tb vanilla
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 1/2 cups marshmallows
1 cup Dr. Pepper (I was worried about using diet, but it worked, so feel free to cut the calories in that area)
3 Tb. unsweetened cocoa powder

Frosting:
1 lb bag of confectioners sugar
6 Tb. Dr. Pepper
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3 Tb. unsweetened cocoa powder

Directions:
Now mind you, I was making this for a potluck, and we all know the deal about potlucks.  Everyone brings the one thing they're really good at making.  So everything is awesome.  And if you bring something crappy it stands out.  Plus you end up taking it home at the end of the night and what's more embarrassing than having to eat leftover crappy cake alone at home?  Perhaps wetting yourself in public, but I'd say that's about it.

So anyway, I found this recipe book online.  And I know that it's a book of traditionally southern African American desserts.  But I found it somehow calling out to me.  Maybe it's the deep fried chicken and kale I was deprived of as a kid, but something in this recipe book called out to me.  So I asked for it as a Hannukah gift and decided to make this recipe the second I saw it.  Dr. Pepper, marshmallows AND chocolate?  There really was no higher priority in my life than immediately getting all necessary ingredients.

After the trek to Whole Foods for kosher marshmallows (which have fish gelatin in them, and I don't usually eat fish, but this was an exception I felt somehow I had to make) I started the complicated journey on the path to perfection.  Otherwise known as making a cake.  Obviously the first thing I did was preheat the oven to 350, though the cake takes a while to put together so if you wait 15 minutes before preheating the oven you'll probably still be fine.

Next you have to melt the butter, marshmallows, cocoa powder, and Dr. Pepper in a saucepan on the oven until it's nice and smooth.  It might get a little frothy for a while but eventually it should have a nice consistent texture:

While it's melting, and assuming you can still pay close enough attention to it that nothing will burn, go ahead and mix together the flour, sugar, and baking soda:

Now slowly pour the melted and smooth marshmallow mixture into the flour mixture and mix it well:

You can beat it a little, but don't get carried away.  It will fall easily off the spoon:

Meanwhile you can beat the eggs in a third bowl until they're nice and fluffy.  I know, lots of bowls in this recipe and lots of clean up.  But I swear it's worth every dish.  Now add in the buttermilk and vanilla and beat for another 30 seconds or so:

Add the egg mixture to the batter and mix until well blended and the batter is smooth.  Pour into a 9x13 inch pan (spray first with butter spray or some equivalent) and bake for 50-55 minutes or until it looks done.  Let cool for at least 10 minutes before frosting, though with this recipe the cake doesn't need to be completely cooled before frosted.  Another reason I love it.  Also just to warn you, when I took the cake out of the oven I was not impressed.  It looked like there were lots of little air bubbles and the cake didn't seem very thick or moist.  Then I frosted it and ate it and realized I could not have been more wrong.  It was perfect.  So please take a moment before judging your naked baked cake.  Give it a chance to impress your tastebuds.  You might be pleasantly surprised.

For the frosting, you're basically going to repeat the first step but with confectioners (aka powdered) sugar.  Melt the butter, cocoa powder, and Dr. Pepper in a saucepan.  I used the same one as before and didn't even bother washing it out because it was mostly the same ingredients.  Once you have a nice smooth consistency, take it off the heat and slowly stir in the whole bag of powdered sugar.  It's a lot of sugar, it's very sweet, and like I said before, it's totally worth it.  Once it's all mixed in you'll still have a pretty drippy looking frosting.  Let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes, and then pour it over the slightly warm cake.  Then let it sit for at least an hour, preferably two, before serving.  I dusted it with more powdered sugar to make it pretty:

And then bask in the glow of compliments you will undoubtedly receive for this piece of perfection.  You'll never look at Dr. Pepper the same way again.  I certainly won't.

Maybe you'll even get enough compliments that you can convince someone to wash your dishes for you...

Dr. Pepper in a Cake? Heck Yes!

Just a heads up that the next post will blow your mind, and if you end up making it, your taste buds too.  Seriously.  Dr. Pepper in a cake may have been the best decision I ever made.  Come back soon, it will be worth your time.  I promise.

Would you like some pie with that?

Delicious Apple Pie with a Surprise Cheese Bottom

I know, I know, it sounds gross.  At least that was the face my sister made when I mentioned cheese in the pie.  But I hear it's pretty common in some parts of the world.  Also, I love eating cheese with apples, so cheese with apple pie is just an obvious next step.  It was delicious, though it also helps that the crust was homemade and I used real butter.  So very important.

From my last post you know I made a very chocolate heavy cake, so I wanted to balance it with something a little different and apples are a great fruit for winter baking.  Originally I wanted to bake something from my Tollhouse cookbook, but I couldn't find butterscotch chips at my local grocery store (they never seem to have anything I want, but it does force me to be creative).  So instead I bastardized the recipe and combined three different recipes to make my own.  Always a fun time.

I started with the crust because that has to sit in the freezer for a while.

Ingredients:
Crust:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup butter (cut into pieces and then put in the freezer for 10-20 minutes)
1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
dash of cinnamon
6-8 tsp ice cold water


Filling:
4 cups pared, cored and sliced apples
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup cheese, I used Mozarella but I hear sharp cheddar is more common


Topping:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
6 Tb butter chilled

First you want to cut up your butter for the crust into small pieces and then put them all in the freezer for about 15 to 20 minutes.  Really cold butter makes for a much flakier crust, and unlike with boys, flaky is a good thing here.  So after you let the butter sit in the freezer, mix the flour, salt, sugar, and cinnamon in a bowl.

Slowly, using a fork and not your hands (which is so hard for me to do, I love using my hands when I bake) press the frozen butter into the flour mixture until it's nice and crumbly:

Now you want to add in the cold water once tablespoon at a time until you get a nice doughy consistency that sticks together but isn't too wet.  You can add more flour or water if your consistency is off, but try not to add too much because the flour-butter ratio is important.  Once you have a good consistency shape it into a ball and place it in the freezer for 15 minutes while you work on the filling.  Now you can preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Because I don't want the apples to sit around too long after they've been cut (I hate when they start to turn brown) I make the topping next and leave the filling for last.  For the topping, mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.  Usually I recommend mixing everything but the butter together first and then adding in the butter.  Cut the butter into pieces and then rub it into the flour/sugar mixture with your hands until you get a nice crumbly mixture.  I guess this isn't that different from the pie crust except that here the heat from your hands isn't a bad thing and you have some sugar to make it sweet.

On to the filling.  Peel and slice up the apples.  If you make thin slices the apples will get softer, but there's no wrong way to cut them.  I like medium thickness so the apples don't just melt in your mouth, but if that's your taste then I say go for it.  In a bowl mix the sliced apples with the flour, sugar, and cinnamon.

Once the apples are evenly coated, let the mixture sit while you roll out the pie dough into a nice medium-thin crust.  I didn't have a rolling pin so I used a coffee can, but anything cylindrical will work.  Place the crust into a pie pan and trim the edges:

I rolled out the excess dough and cut leaf shapes out of it to decorate the edges but you can make any shapes you want (or none at all if you're anti-shapes).  Then I took my Mozzarella slices and layered them on the bottom of the crust.  You can skip that part, but I think the cheese added a nice and unusual quality to the pie.  After that you can pour the apple mixture into the crust.  I laid the apples out nicely, but they're going to be covered by the topping anyway so it doesn't really matter.  Sprinkle the topping over the apples until they're all covered, and then put the dough-leaves around the edge.

Cover in tin foil and bake for about 30 minutes, then uncover and bake it for another 20-25 minutes.  After 15 minutes you can check on it and decide when to take it out depending on how quickly the top and edges are browning.

Voila!

Tastiness awaits your happy mouth.  Now go and be fed.

A Veritable Cornocopia

Holiday season is upon us, and after a weekend of gorging myself on Thanksgiving treats, it was somewhat depressing to return to DC and discover that the leftovers had not magically returned along with me.  Of course the obvious solution to this problem was to create my own leftovers.  And an early Hannukah offered the perfect excuse.  Additionally, while I would be quite content to nourish myself entirely on cakes and pies, I could hear the Jewish mother in my head reminding me that vegetables are an important food group.  So I dragged myself to the grocery store and spent an embarrassing amount of money on butter, eggs, chocolate, vegetables, cheese and the like.  Then I set to work in the kitchen.

There's really nothing I like more than to spend my day off in my running clothes, covered in flour and cocoa and baking something sweet for people I love.  Occasionally the thought crosses my head that this might be a fun way to spend my life, but then I wouldn't have anything to do with my free time.  Also I like to take my time when I bake, and I'm pretty sure professional bakers are constantly rushing.  And they get up at 4 AM to make bread which does not sound even slightly appealing.

Anyway, I am going to break this post up into several installments only so it's easier to follow the recipes.  I got occasionally distracted while baking so a few recipes have less pictures of the process, but I am confident that should you try to recreate any of these you will do just fine.  Worst case scenario you have a bowl of sugary butter, and there's nothing wrong with that.  Nothing wrong at all.

On my menu for the week was a quinoa-cauliflower-feta invention and a spinach and mushroom lasagna.  I forgot that cheese is surprisingly expensive and that managed to bring me back quite a pretty penny.  But the results were oh-so worth it.  Assuming you're not lactose intolerant.  But if you are you probably have no reason to continue reading my blog other than my occasionally witty remark.  Because I love butter.  And cheese.  A lot.  Perhaps one of the reasons veganism didn't quite work out for me.

But back to the recipes (how did I manage to write so many paragraphs without even hinting at my dessert?!).  Also on the menu were two desserts from my favorite cookbook in the entire world.  It is the Toll House dessert cookbook and I may or may not be obsessed with it. I picked out the Toll House Cake (a white cake with chocolate chips and milk chocolate frosting) and an Apple Pie.  If your mouth isn't watering yet you should check your taste buds to make sure they're still working.  Seriously.

I'll start with the cake recipe and put the rest of them up over the next two days.  Get psyched!

Tollhouse Cake Recipe
Ingredients:
Cake:

2 cups flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 cup butter/margarine softened
2  tsp baking powder
1 cup chocolate chips (or one chocolate bar chopped into small to medium chunks)


Frosting:
1 cup butter softened
2 cups confectioners sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350.  But when you're baking, that's almost always a given.

You start by doing the traditional cake thing.  Beat the margarine for about 30 seconds, then gradually add in the two sugars until you get a nice creamy consistency.  It takes about 3 or 4 minutes which always seems like an eternity to me, but it's worth it if you want a good batter.  Then slowly add in the eggs one at a time making sure the beat well after each one.  Your batter should look something like this:

I saw the Cadbury chocolate bar and decided to use it instead of chocolate chips just to mix it up a bit.  I chopped it up and then had a hard time resisting the urge to eat it all before adding it to the batter.

Now, after making sure your flour isn't clumpy, and ideally after mixing it in a separate bowl with the baking powder and salt (though we all know by now I pretty much never do this) you can slowly beat it into the sugar/butter mixture.  I also added a few dashes of cinnamon, because I can really never get enough of that spice.  After that, you can slowly mix in the chocolate chips with a spoon.  Resist the urge to eat all the batter immediately.  And if you're really smart you'll dust the chocolate chips in flour first so they don't all sink to the bottom of the batter as soon as it goes in the oven.  As you can see, I did not do this:

But it turned out okay in the end anyway, so no worries.  I slid it in a small loaf pan:

And baked it for about an hour and a half.  This is because I accidentally preheated my oven to 250 degrees instead of 350 and realized this 30 minutes after I put the cake in the oven.  So I just upped the temperature and periodically checked on the cake until it was thoroughly baked.  Theoretically if you bake it at the correct temperature it should only take 45 minutes to bake.  But you're welcome to try it my way.  I took it out and sliced off the lump on top to make frosting easier.  Cakes ALWAYS have a little lump towards the center, if they don't they have definitely been trimmed before frosting.  It looked so good inside!

While your cake is cooling you can melt a little over a cup of chocolate chips on the stove for the frosting.  You could theoretically do it in the microwave, but chocolate melts better over a low flame, and when you're using it in a frosting consistency is very important.

Now beat the cup of softened butter and slowly add in the confectioner's sugar and vanilla.  Feel free to add more confectioner's sugar if the consistency isn't right, but make sure to beat it for at least 3 minutes after all the sugar is in before adding more.  Once you have a nice frosting-like consistency add in the melted chocolate and beat until you have a nice chocolate colored frosting.

Now, once the cake is cooled remove it from the pan and slice it into four equal layers cutting the long way across.  I like to cut it in half using a bread knife, and then cut each half in half.  This makes for the most even layers, but you're welcome to eyeball it starting from the bottom.

Place the bottom layer on a plate and put a large dollop of frosting down and spread it evenly:

Add a layer and frost continuing until you've done all four.  Then use the remaining frosting on the top and sides.  This recipe doesn't make a ton of frosting so either be conservative in your frosting of the layers, or double the recipe for the frosting.

I added some festive chocolate chips on top.  Unnecessary, and I didn't have enough space to make a proper chanukiya, but still pretty.

And when your guests finally finally FINALLY arrive, you can cut it open and it looks like this:

 

Tada!  Delicious cake magic.  And it only took me 50 million paragraphs to report.

Now go eat and be merry.

A Martha Pumpkin Swirl

So I've never really been a follower of Martha Stuart, but after my little adventure I might have to reconsider my feelings towards her.  I love pumpkin, I love chocolate, and I love recipes that require more than two bowls.  Not that I love washing them, but I derive a certain pleasure from the process of baking and if there's something that will prolong that process and improve the taste, I'm in favor of trying it.  So when I found a Martha Stuart Pumpkin Chocolate Brownie Swirl recipe, I figured I'd give it a go.

The list of ingredients is not quite daunting, though it is a bit longer than most brownie recipes.  After having made it, I'd probably make a few changes to the recipe.  I found it on the Smitten Kitchen blog (here's the direct link) but the following is my own slightly altered version.  I'm including alterations I'd make if I were to do it again.  If you try it and it doesn't work, feel free to blame it on me.  There are plenty of other things to blame failure on though, so I encourage you to try the blame on them first, but I guess I'm a good third or fourth scapegoat.  

Anyway, here's the ingredient list if you're making it in a 9x13 inch baking pan.  Also, I would say this is more of a cake than a brownie, despite what Martha and Smitten seem to think.  We clearly have differing opinions of what constitutes a brownie.  

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine (for those of you afraid of cholesterol or dairy)

12 oz (1 regular size bag) semisweet chocolate chips

3 1/4 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 cup sugar

6 eggs plus 2 egg whites (or 8 eggs if you can stomach cracking that many eggs into one dessert)

2 Tb vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (about 1 1/2 cans)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1 cup chocolate chips (extra for mixing in, not to be confused with what you're melting)

1/2 cup chopped pecans

First preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  I forgot to do this until halfway through which was fine, because this recipe takes a while to make and our oven heats up fast.  But all recipes start with preheating the oven, so there's no real reason to do this one any differently.

Next mix together in a bowl the eggs, vanilla extract and sugar beating until you get a pretty foamy layer on top.  Five minutes with electric beaters, or three if you're impatient like myself.  It should look something like this:

Now go get a pan (don't try it in the microwave, you are likely to burn the chocolate, trust me I've done it enough times) and melt the butter and chocolate over the stove until smooth.  It should look something like Willy Wonka's chocolate river.  Or the picture below:

Now mix the flour, baking powder, cayenne pepper, and salt together in a bowl.  I hate doing this and usually just add all the dry ingredients into the wet at once.  But you're going to need the second bowl later anyway, so with this recipe you might as well.

Good, now you're going to beat the flour mixture into the egg mixture in batches until it's all nicely combined like this:

Doesn't that just make you want to start baking this recipe immediately?  It just looks so darn tasty.  God, I'm starting to want to make it all over again just posting these pictures.  But I guess I should finish my post first.

So now you're going to split this batter between your two bowls (see, I wasn't lying when I said you'd need it anyway).  I didn't read the whole recipe before I started to make it and at this point realized I should have just mixed the dry ingredients together in the second bowl to begin with.  Ah well, live and learn.

Now that you've split the batter, you're going to pour the chocolate mixture into one of the bowls and beat it in with the batter.  You will likely begin to drool at this point, so I suggest wearing a face mask.  Learning to shut your mouth when cooking might also work, but I have yet to master that technique.  Now try not to drool on your laptop, but this is what it should look like:

Great, so now you're going to add the pumpkin, oil, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the other bowl of batter and beat it all together.  Side by side it looks like these lovely ladies:

Now I think things could always use chocolate chips, so I would recommend adding a cup of chocolate chips to the chocolate bowl.  You could really put them in either, but the chocolate chips might dim the orange/brown contrast of batters if there's already brown in the orange batter.  I think I might have made that sentence unnecessarily complicated.  I'm going to assume you're smart enough to piece out my meaning.

Now you're going to grease a 9x13 pan and pour half the chocolate batter into the bottom of the pan.  Top it with half the pumpkin batter.  It looks like this:

Spread it evenly across the chocolate bottom, and then put down another chocolate layer and a final pumpkin layer.  Using a knife, swirl it around until you get the marbling effect you wanted:

Sprinkle the pecans on top and bake for about an hour, but check on it at 45 minutes in case your oven is much faster than mine.  When it's done it will look like this:

And it will taste like this:

YUM!!!

Actually, I thought it was just ok but everyone else seemed to love it and it was gone by the end of Saturday afternoon so I guess something went right.  Perhaps it's because I have a different expectation of brownies.  I want them to be moist and not at all spongy, so this was a bit too cake-like for me.  But With my suggested alterations (more sugar, less flour, added chocolate chips) I think it will be a bit more brownie-esque.  But really, I like pleasing others with my food just as much as I like pleasing myself, so in that regard it really was a success.  

In other exciting news, my sister just bought me a new copy of my favorite dessert cookbook (I long ago wore my last copy to pieces) so when I return to DC I will attempt to bake everything from the book I haven't tried before.  There isn't much, but I'm giving it all a shot.  That means you have some donuts and several candies coming at you in the next few weeks.  Get excited!  I certainly am.

I'll Be Back. Schwarzennegar Style

I am still cooking, I promise.  Baking too.  Unfortunately, this week has been rather busy and I've been out to eat for almost every meal.  While this means my belly is very happy, it also means I haven't really had a chance (or need) to bake anything. 

Regardless of how little I may need the actual food product, I can hear my electric beaters calling out to me from inside the cabinet.  The eggs in the refrigerator tempt me every time I go into the kitchen.  They seem to be begging to be cracked and mixed with sugar and butter and cocoa.  But I must resist until Friday when I'm home in Chicago for Thanksgiving.  Then the pumpkin swirl brownies will pour from my fingertips (not literally of course, though that would be a pretty bad ass super power).  I will mix to my heart's content and be, well, content.  Sadly, brownies don't travel well.  And who knows what kind of damage the x-ray scanning machines might have on them.  So I will have to settle with everyone else making the food for Thanksgiving, and me waiting for Friday afternoon to bake for Shabbat.

If I can't scan pictures of those desserts, I promise that next week I will make something incredibly extravagantly beautiful.  It will be worth the long wait, I assure you.

On a completely unrelated and separate note, I would like to take a moment to be thankful for something in particular this Thanksgiving Day.  I would like to be thankful for Herbert Johnson, who in 1908, invented electric beaters. 

While it's possible that I might have far stronger muscles without this invention, it's far more likely that I would just never make anything requiring stiff egg whites.  So next time you eat a meringue, take a moment to silently thank Johnson for his gift to the kitchen without which we might be far less inclined to bake.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving and please keep coming back.  Otherwise I might have to be thankful for the entire pie in my refrigerator.