Chocolate Covered Cherry Cookies

...say that three times fast.


The occasion was another potluck at work. In addition to making my mom's Sup Mang Cua (crab asparagus soup), I wanted to bake something. I found a recipe for chocolate covered cherry cookies in a holiday baking magazine at the library. If you know me, or go through this blog, you'll know that I am not a cookie baker. I usually outsource that--or have to be closely supervised.

But not one to be defeated by butter, eggs and flour, I gave it another try. On the sign-up list at work, I put myself down for the soup and "Dessert--to be a surprise!" Whether burnt or ambrosial, I suppose my coworkers were in for a surprise either way.

1. Cream 1/2 cup of butter with 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 tsp. of baking powder, 1/4 tsp. of baking soda, and 1/4 tsp. of salt. Beat in 1 egg and 1-1/2 tsp. of vanilla.

2. Add 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder. Stir in 1-1/2 cups of flour with a wooden spoon.

3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls, placed about 2-inches apart on cookie sheets. Press you thumb into the center of each ball and place a maraschino cherry in the center.

4. Meanwhile, make the frosting by warming 1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk in a small saucepan and melt 1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips into it. Stir in about 4 tsps. of the juice drained from the cherries. Add more juice if the chocolate frosting is too thick.


5. Spoon a little bit of the frosting over each cherry. Bake about 10 minutes in a 350 degree (F). Let cool on the cookie sheet about a minute before transferring to a wire rack.














 
 

6. Eat.

Too cute to eat?!

I was in search of something interesting to make for my upcoming potluck at work. My friend, Liza, mentioned pies on sticks. Somehow this elicits the same reaction from everyone the first time they hear it, and you are probably thinking it now: ????

I made an experimental batch.

Too cute to eat? You tell me.

I ate some anyway.

Blueberry Cobbler = Summer's Official Arrival

Blueberries are in season here in central Pennsylvania--as well as plenty other places too, I'd imagine. In the off season, they go for $6-7 a pint. And because they have to be imported from somewhere warm in the winter time, they are usually picked before they are fully ripe--yielding sour berries with mealy texture.

By contrast, right now I can get two pints for $3 and in peak condition! They are so fresh and plump that every single berry is edible. I don't even have to pick them over and throw out mushy ones because there are none.

I decided to make a blueberry cobbler to bring over to my friend JoAnn's tonight.

Blueberry cobbler is something I was only recently introduced to; that is, a few summers ago, when I moved to New York. In Manhattan, one of the things I really liked were the fruit stands that dotted the city and which I would inevitably run into, on my way to a subway station. The fruit was of pretty good quality, at very reasonable prices. (And here I put the disclaimer of not discussing why the prices at these fruit stands were so cheap, i.e., labor costs, etc.) Anyway, a friend was incredulous that I had never had blueberry cobbler, or even very many fresh blueberries ever for that matter. So I decided to try it one day, using Baking Illustrated's recipe.

So simple; just cobbled together from ingredients you most likely have lying around anyway. All I had to do was run to the corner and get some blueberries from the street vendor. I don't think my friend ever really knew it, but a secret love affair was born.

I rarely like cooked fruit. For that reason, I rarely eat pie (although I love making it). But blueberry cobbler is perhaps the one dish where I like the cooked fruit more than the fresh fruit. And I always forget this.

But what I don't forget is the awe I discovered when I had my first bite of cobbler ever. How could it be that such humble ingredients (flour, buttermilk, cornmeal, baking powder/soda, sugar, pinch of salt) make something so rich? I love the royal color of the blueberry juices bubbling up; the texture of the cornmeal in the dough; the soft scent of cinnamon; and the way it all comes together with the juices soaking up into the dough.

Blueberry Cobbler (America's Test Kitchen)

Filling

• 1/2 c. granulated sugar
• 1 T. cornstarch
• pinch ground cinnamon
• pinch table salt
• 6 C. fresh blueberries (30 ounces), picked over
• 1-1/2  t. grated lemon zest
• 1 T. lemon juice

Biscuit Topping

• 1 C. unbleached all-purpose flour (5 ounces)
• 2 T. cornmeal , stone-ground
• 1/4 C. granulated sugar , plus 2 teaspoons for sprinkling
• 2 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. baking soda
• 1/4 t. table salt
• 4 T. unsalted butter (1/2 stick), melted
• 1/3 C. buttermilk
• 1/2 t. vanilla extract
• 1/8 t. ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Stir sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in large bowl. Add berries and mix gently with rubber spatula until evenly coated; add lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer berry mixture to 9-inch glass pie pan, place pie pan on rimmed baking sheet, and bake until filling is hot and bubbling around edges, about 25 minutes.

3. While blueberries are baking: Whisk flour, cornmeal, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl to combine. Whisk melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla in small bowl. Mix remaining 2 teaspoons sugar and cinnamon in second small bowl and set aside. One minute before berries come out of the oven, add wet ingredients to dry ingredients; stir with rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.
4. Remove berries from oven; increase oven temperature to 425 degrees.

5. Pinch off 8 equal-sized pieces biscuit dough and place on hot berry filling, spacing them at least 1/2 inch apart (they should not touch). Sprinkle each mound of dough with cinnamon-sugar.

6. Bake until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool cobbler on wire rack 20 minutes and serve.

Black Forest Cake (and Fireflies)

A co-worker friend invited some girls over for a "Girls Night In" since her fiance was away on his bachelor trip. We rented a chick flick (Leap Year), had wine/champagne, pizza, fruit and cheese. I volunteered to make dessert.

We ended up not watching the movie; I did not drink any wine or champagne (just pink lemonade); and instead played with the 9-month-old baby Drew who quickly turned out to be the de facto guest of honor. We stayed outside until the sun started to set, and the fireflies started dancing.

As a West Coast girl, fireflies were a fantasy to me while I was growing up. They existed in country songs and modern day fairy tales, but not in real life. It wasn't until last summer that I saw my first firefly. It was an experience that was fascinating then, and still enchanting now.

The fact that they buzz about so leisurely and lackadaisical that you can easily catch them enhances their romanticism a zillion times. They are what summer evenings should be all about: taking things slowly, brightening the cool end of a hot day, and bringing childish awe and delight to an otherwise unremarkable setting.

The dessert I opted to bring was Black Forest Cake. Coming off the high of accomplishing croissants, I wanted to again attempt something new. I wanted it to be technically challenging and to present well--and taste good too.

Genoise cake is something I have generally stayed away from. Having attempted it a couple times in the past with unfortunate results, I was a little apprehensive to try it again. So I formulated a backup plan: I would make the genoise the night before and if it sucked, then it would go in the garbage can and *gasp* boxed cake mix would have to do for the Girls Night In.

I used America's Test Kitchen's recipe for Chocolate Genoise, which is in their Baking Illustrated book. Genoise can be tricky because it is a cake that uses no chemical leaveners--no baking soda or baking powder. Any loft it gets comes solely from the air that you beat into the eggs. So how do you preserve that air throughout the mixing and baking process? You have to stabilize the eggs by beating them while slightly cooking them over a bain marie (hot water bath).

But you also have to be careful about not over-cooking the eggs and scrambling them. In this case, I used a thermometer to keep the temperature around 100-110 degrees F. I had to take the bowl off and on the simmering water bath a couple times until the eggs formed the proper texture. You know they are rightly beaten when they become pale yellow and form a thick ribbon as they fall from the beaters.

How did the genoise turn out? Not bad. The texture was much improved, and I would even venture to call the genoise my most successful one yet. The only problem was that I used a springform pan slightly too large for the recipe, so my cake was thinner than I would have liked. This made it more difficult to slice the layers, but it still made for a pretty tasty cake!

1. Macerate the tart cherries in cherry wine (or kirsch liqueur if you can find it). Using sweet cherries will be too sweet.


2. Bake the genoise cake.


3. Beat the heavy cream, and stabilize it with cooked cornstarch.


4. Layer the cake with whipped cream and cherries (that look like crushed tomatoes!)



5. Repeat!


6. Shave bittersweet chocolate. Coat the sides of cake.




7. Finish decorating with maraschino cherries.

Chocolate Croissants

It's been a while, and so much has happened! I got a new day job, moved to a new state, and adopted new extracurriculars :-)

While I've done baking here and there, I haven't tried anything new until a couple weeks ago when I got the urge to try making croissants after watching "It's Complicated"--a cute movie, if you haven't seen it.

I found that the key ingredient to making croissants by hand and from scratch is patience. And the key to preserving patience is to make the time pass by faster. So I started the croissant dough at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, when I was also planning to have friends visit and go for a hike. We went to Lewis Rocks in central Pennsylvania, and hiked along a creek that led to waterfalls and scrambled up rocks to a summit that afforded gorgeous views of the Cumberland Valley.

Each day went by fast, and at night I would roll out the croissant dough for an additional turn.

The recipe I used is from Cook's Illustrated (subscription required--but so worth it). Cook's Illustrated is my go-to for recipes because when they finalize a recipe, it's been tested about a million times and they tell you what works, what doesn't, and why. Heart them!

The idea of making croissants daunted me because they make such a big deal about how the butter in the dough makes it really delicate and fussy. But if you have the patience to let the dough chill sufficiently between the turns (i.e., each time you roll it out and fold it back in on itself to create the layers of dough and butter which eventually form the telltale flakiness of croissants) then it is really manageable.

As I unabashedly described to an admirer (of the croissants) who saw pictures of them right out of the oven: "The texture right out of the oven was *amazing.* They (yes I had more than one) were flaky on the outer layers, and soft but still a little chewy in the middle layers. When you bite through all the layers together, it is a perfect combination of crinkly/soft/warm/chewy and then*mmmm* the warm chocolate percolates through."

1. Make the dough. Let rise for 2 hours.
2. Prepare the butter square. Then chill for 2 hours.
3. Roll out the dough.
4. Fold in the butter square. Chill 2 hours.
5. Repeat.
6. Roll out the butter-layered dough.
7. Cut out and shape croissants.
8. Prepare for the oven.

9. Eat!

Farewell Marika!

The highlight of my week for over a year and a half now is teaching a small group of kindergartners at KidsQuest, which is the McLean Bible Church version of Sunday school. About six months ago, I was asked to also help out in the large group production--where a group of about 100 kindergarten and first graders come in assembly style to hear a bible story and sing worship songs. Wow! You wouldn't think it, but they are an intimidating group. Their attention span is about 0.5 seconds and definitely let you know if you aren't interesting enough or are just downright boring.

Thankfully, I had an awesome partner on stage who really bolstered my credibility with these youngsters!Marika and I would feed off each other's energy and it really showed when the kids would get fired up for her stories and the songs we'd lead together. Sadly, she recently had to return to her home country of Moldova. To send her a fond farewell (or rather, "see you soon"), we had a party with board games, and a cake that I made.

How often do you let the frosting dictate the cake? Well, I did. I knew that I would be frosting the cake with mousseline buttercream (what else of course!) And when I do, I'll have egg yolks leftover. Is there a cake recipe that only uses egg yolk? YES! It's called Golden Layer Cake, and I found it in The Joy of Cooking.I filled the cake with peaches and cream.Then I decorated it with peachy flowers that are slightly tinged with red at the edges.

"Pink" Velvet Cupcakes

My friend Khanh was visiting during a stop on her tour of North America, and we made sure it was a special visit for her. First, we ordered up fat snow--in the order of 20-something inches worth over less than 24 hours.Then, she remarked that she had heard so much about red velvet cake, but had never had it. Well, I had never made it. So I thought, why not give it a try? Not having much experience with it before, I picked a recipe from Food Network.Somehow, it didn't quite turn out the way I expected.They turned out rather pink, instead of red. Nonetheless, they were yum.I later spread them with cream cheese icing that I had leftover from some strawberry cake that I had previously made. But first I ate a couple naked. I mean, the cakes were naked...as in, not frosted. Oh whatever, you know what I mean: