Nutella Truffles

It's been a long time since my last post, I know. I hope you'll all forgive me. I have been rather short on time lately, and most of all short on camera. This picture, in fact was taken on my cell phone, if you couldn't tell.

Ingredients:

• 9 oz dark chocolate
• 4 oz heavy cream
• 1 oz corn syrup
• 2 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp Nutella
• 1.5 cups puffed rice cereal
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• Chocolate for dipping

Combine the cream and the corn syrup in a saucepan and bring to a boil. In a food processor, pulse until the chocolate is in small chunks. With the processor running, stream in the cream. Then add the butter and Nutella. Add in the cereal and sugar. Use your hands or a scoop to portion into bite sized pieces. Precoat by rolling in chocolate. Once hardened, dip again in tempered chocolate, letting the excess chocolate drain off.

Not so hard, and (in my very chocolate-biased opinion) fun. Thanks for sticking with me while the blog undergoes some changes. :)

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Dark and white chocolate Cake

I've been doing a lot with chocolate lately. And loving it. It really is an awesome and delicious media, and what better way to decorate a cake when you're tired of piping?

Ingredients:

• 2 ounces cocoa powder
• 8 ounces flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 10 ounces butter, softened
• 4 ounces granulated sugar
• 3 ounces brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 6 ounces milk
• 1 ounce creme de cacao
• 6 ounces butter, softened
• 2 ounces white chocolate, melted
• 4-5 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons water
• 4 ounces white chocolate, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 360 degrees F. Whisk together the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking powder.
2. Beat together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
4. Alternately add in the dry ingredients and wet ingredients (milk and liqueur) until just combined.
5. Pour into prepared pans and bake for approximately 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
6. Once cooled, beat together the 6 ounces of butter, the 2 ounces of white chocolate, and the powdered sugar until light and fluffy.
7. Add the water and beat for approximately 4 more minutes, or until light and fluffy again.
8. Frost the cakes.
9. Pour the rest of the melted white chocolate into molds, or onto parchment paper. If pouring onto parchment paper, freeze the chocolate and break it into small piece before piecing it onto the cake.

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Homemade Flavor Extracts

This post is a shout-out for all of you out there who always seem to have some over-ripe fruit hanging around. You know who you are.

You have a few options.

1. Make puree's. They keep fairly well in the freezer and can be added to smoothies, ice creams, etc.
2. Dehydrate them. This only works if you have a dehydrator, and one can only take so much dehydrated fruit, but this is a good option every once and a while.
3. Make flavor extracts. This is my favorite. Why? Because an extract can be used to make delicious candies, chocolates, and way more without having to mess much with an existing recipe. 

I apologize for the bad picture.

The process is super simple, and you only need two ingredients.

1. Ripe fruit
2. Vodka

When selecting a vodka, shoot for the middle of the road. You don't need a great vodka (it's not worth it), but you don't want the cheapest vodka you can find, either, because some off flavors can get in.

All you need to do is cut some of the fruit up nice and small, add it to a small bottle (to 1/4 full or so, less for citrus), and pour in some vodka. It takes a few weeks to get good flavors, but you can shove them into the back of your pantry and forget about it. For citrus fruits, use the zest. For others, try to figure out what the most flavorful part of the fruit is. For apples, the peel makes a great extract, but for mangoes, the flesh is best.

Eventually these extracts will lose their alcohol smell and taste, and will blossom into delicious flavors. I will warn you, however, that this can get a bit addicting. A bit.

What do you usually do with fruit that's nearing its end?

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Know your cookies: fat

I'll start by telling you all that this week's cookie experiment was just as successful as last week's, and a hundred times tastier. This time, I varied the fat, with somewhat surprising results. I stuck the liquid level at a constant (somewhat - it went over in the upper levels of fat, just because of how much water was in the butter) 50%.

I totally love doing these recipe development posts, as I hope you all do. I started this trial by making cookies with no fat, 25% (based on flour weight), 50%, 75%, and 100% fat weight. This was calculated by subtracting the weight of the water from the weight of the butter to get the weight of the fat.

vvbvgfcv. (My dog's contribution to the post)

The real shocker came in the 0% fat cookies. They were amazingly, surprisingly delicious. They came out super gooey. They were also fairly chewy, and a bit coarse. But in no way were they horrible. I would definitely make them again. (Oh, and full disclosure, they have small amounts of fat from the egg yolk and milk, but I don't count that, compared to the possible 4+ ounces of butter)

The 25% cookies were actually worse. They were chewy,  but rather tough.

The 50% cookies ended up fairly chewy and fairly soft, and decidedly richer than the previous two.

The 75% cookies were soft, but still had some height. They melted in the mouth and were a bit richer than the 50%.

The 100% cookies were very soft (falling apart) and flattened in the oven. They also melted in the mouth, and were very rich. They took on a caramel flavor which the previous cookies didn't have.

And that was this week's experiment in cookie recipe development. Do with it what you will. I suggest somewhere between 50% and 100%, keeping in mind that the higher the percentage, the richer the cookie and the more spread you get.

Oh, and here's the recipe for the butter-free cookies. Mix together the dry ingredients, then add the wet ingredients and mix to combine. Bake at 350 for about 12 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces AP flour
• 4 ounces brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg
• .6 ounces milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

What characteristics do you enjoy in a cookie?

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Earl Grey Peach Cake

Going back to school has really brought some more inspiration into my life. Being around tons of great recipes and products like pepper jelly and cayenne chocolates, chocolate stout cakes, and strawberry yogurt mousse tortes, has given me tons of great recipe ideas. But sadly, school has also sapped all of the baking time out of my life.

Oh peaches.

So I've decided to bottle it all up until the weekends, when I can bake and write recipes and blog posts for the week ahead. I settled on this plan Tuesday and have been looking forward to baking this cake all week.

The results were rather messy, but the taste was all there.

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces flour (cake or AP)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 12 ounces eggs
• 11 ounces sugar
• 8 ounces Earl Grey tea
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 8 ounces butter, softened
• 2 tablespoon Earl Grey reduction (To make, brew a cup of Earl Grey, add about 1/4 cup of sugar, and simmer until most of the water is gone.)
• 1 egg (or 2 tablespoons pasteurized egg)
• ~7 cups powdered sugar
• pinch salt
• 2 medium peaches, chopped and dried

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare two 8 inch round pans with flour and parchment.
2. Whisk together the flour and salt.
3. In a mixer, beat the eggs and sugar for about 5 minutes on medium speed, until thick and pale.
4. Mix the 8 oz of Earl Grey with the vanilla. Alternately mix in the flour mixture and the liquids.
5. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature.
6. Beat together the butter, reduction, egg, and salt, adding powdered sugar to desired consistency.
7. Frost the cake, filling and topping it with peaches.

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Chocolate Rum Shot Glasses

Sometimes, in the kitchen, I don't think. I just get an idea and go with it. I don't stop to think "Hey, wait a minute, there's a reason they make chocolate molds for shot glasses!" I just try to make them in regular shot glasses. And then they don't come unmolded.

But I urge you not to do the same. Make these, for sure. But get some molds. Or use some sort of nonstick spray or something. But don't just pour chocolate into shot glasses (what was I thinking?).

For each shot glass, you will need:

• .5 ounce chocolate, tempered
• .5 oz chocolate, melted
• .5 oz heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon rum

Here's a little article on chocolate.

To prepare the filling, whisk together the chocolate, cream, and rum. Fill the shot glasses and enjoy. Responsibly (although I can't imagine how many of these it would take a person to get intoxicated).

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Tarts and Hamsters

Today, among piles of cookies, there sits a tart. It is not, however, a tart that you all want a recipe for. It was rather a disaster (the black pepper in the crust isn't as subtle as I would like (or subtle at all, for that matter)). But, such is life. This past week has been a bit crazy (and I still have tons of cookies from the last post), but I promise another post is coming soon. An actual one, with useful information and all. So, stay tuned. To hold you over, here is a gif of a hamster.

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Know your cookies: moisture

I know I've mentioned it in a few posts, but I'm glad to be done with cakes for a little while. Really, there's only so much cake a person can eat, and only so many cake-related posts a person can write before he starts to go a bit loopy.

I can now testify that the same thing happens with cookies. After making four batches of cookies today, with more planned soon, I'm seeing them when I close my eyes. But it was all in the name of science (or at least pseudo-science), and because of it I now know a bit more about the role of moisture in cookies.

Each batch was made by using a standard cookie recipe and changing the amount of liquid in the recipe (counting the water in the eggs and butter) based on the flour weight. So if the cookie had 10 ounces of flour in it, the water weight for a cookie with 50% water would be 5 ounces.

Batch #1: 30% water
This batch was with no milk added. All of this water came just from the butter and eggs. I had to knead in the last of the flour at the end, and it was a very crumbly dough. It turned into a fairly dry and crumbly cookie as well. It reminded me of a snickerdoodle when I bit into it. This cookie was fairly chewy, but a bit to dry for optimum chewiness. They did not spread at all, and I had to flatten them manually during the baking.

Batch #2: 50% water
These cookies were a bit easier to work with, being a more moist dough, and reminded me of my mom's cookies (cakey). They were slightly less chewy than batch #1 and had some spread.

Batch #3: 100% water
These cookies had considerable spread. The consistency was very light, soft, and cake-like. They had a very fine and soft grain (little holes inside cakes, muffins, etc).

Batch #4: 50% water + 200% baking powder
I knew what to expect from a higher moisture content that 100% (more cakey texture), and so I decided to try a different variable: baking powder. I honestly expected more of a difference between these and batch #2. These cookies were slightly more airy than batch #2, but that didn't change them much at all.

And so went my day. I still have two very large containers full of cookies that I'm not sure what to do with. But I did learn a very important factor for cookie recipes. Moisture content for dry cookies should hit about 30%, and super soft cookies 50-100%. That puts my perfect chewy cookies somewhere around 40% water content. My series on recipe development for cookies is off to a good start, folks.

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Cinna-muffins with Earl Grey Glaze

In case you haven't seen, I just finished researching, testing, and writing a small guide to recipe development as pertaining to cakes. It was fun and exhausting (not to mention boring to pore over some very dry writing) but I'm glad to be moving on from cakes now. The plan (soon enough) is to look at recipe development and how ingredients work together in cookies, but we'll make a few brief stopovers first. Today I tried the formula for muffins from Ratio by Michael Ruhlman. Overall: I'm fairly impressed. They were a bit more moist than I like my muffins, but it wasn't a bad change of pace.

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces AP flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 4 ounces brown sugar
• 4 ounces butter
• 2 eggs
• 8 ounces milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teabag of Earl Grey tea
• ~3 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1. First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Line a muffin tin with papers.
2. Whisk together the dry ingredients.
3. Melt the butter and mix in the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until blended.
4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, mixing until just combined.
5. Spoon the batter into muffin tins, filling about half full.
6. Bake for approximately 16-18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
7. Once the muffins have cooled, pour approximately 1/4 cup of boiling water over the teabag. Let this steep for a few minutes.
8. Remove the teabag and mix in powdered sugar little by little until the desired glaze consistency is reached (approximately the viscosity of corn syrup).
9. Dip the muffin tops in the glaze and let harden for a few minutes.
10. Serve with tea, coffee, or plain.

What's your favorite topping on a muffin? Do you like streusel, glaze, or something else?

Did I mention my eBook? It's for sale in the upper left corner, and I'm also giving a couple of copies away to people who join the site via Google Friend Connect!

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Cocoa Powder and Cupcakes

Normally I'm not one to be affected much by the richness of a dessert. The notable exception is peanut butter and chocolate desserts. Something about the combination of flavors, honestly, takes me to a dark place. It probably stems back to a misspent childhood of gorging myself of Reese's Pieces (also the reason circus peanuts changed overnight from my favorite to most revolting candy). These cupcakes were an effort to overcome these feelings and to do another test run of my new layer cake guidelines. Spoiler alert: success!

I'm also super excited to announce my new short ebook! It's a great little guide for creating a cake recipe that goes far above and beyond what's found on the site already. Cakery is 90% new content, and the content which is from the blog had been retooled and adjusted, in light of some research and experiments I've done since then. So if you liked the recipe development posts and want to take your cakes to the next level, there's a button in the upper left-hand corner that'll take you through a quick and easy Google Checkout so you can get the book within minutes. Did I mention it's only $5?

I'm also giving away a couple of free copies! All you have to do to win one is follow me with Google Friend Connect (the gadget is at the bottom of the page). So click the little join button (you won't get any spam, just a feed of my blog posts) and in a couple of days, I'll send the winners an email. Good luck!

A note on cocoa powder: I wanted a very chocolatey cake, bordering on bitter, and I got it. I recommend, then, not using cocoa powder for any more than 1/3 of your driers.

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces AP flour
• 2 ounces cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3.6 ounces butter, softened
• 3 ounces sugar
• 1 egg
• 4.2 ounces milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 4 ounces butter, softened
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1. First, preheat the oven to about 360 degrees F. Line cupcake tins with papers and set aside.
2. Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add in the egg and beat until combined.
5. Alternate in the driers and the milk and vanilla until all are combined.
6. Scoop the batter into the cupcake papers, filling about half full.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Once the cupcakes have cooled, beat together the 4 oz butter, the peanut butter, and the powdered sugar until light and fluffy. Ice the cupcakes.

What childhood candies set your stomach churning?

For more content on recipes and recipe development, subscribe.

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Summer in September (with Blackberry Chocolate Roulade recipe)

Today, September 11th, 2011, it is 85 degrees outside. In Washington. Here in the evergreen state, we panic when heat sets in. Every year when the temperature gauge hits seventy-five we flock to home improvement stores to wipe clean their stock of fans. And then we hunker down, six fans pointed straight at each of us, lathered in an inch-thick layer of sunscreen to protect our fair skin, and wait for September.

Our plants are just as heat-sensitive as we are

September is the magical time of year when the clouds and rain return, and we can all come out of our sun-induced hibernation and return to our lives. Or at least it's supposed to be. This time of year, frozen blackberries bide their time to shine, when the first holiday pie is dreamed of. But not this year.

I find it handy to have all of the ingredients measured and ready to go

Eggs and sugar get a nice foam going

So I find myself making this cake by way of grudging acknowledgement that summer has not left. All I can do now is pray for a better October.

The batter with all of the ingredients should be light, but fairly viscous

Ingredients:

• 4 ounces AP flour
• 2 ounces cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 7 ounces eggs
• 5 ounces white sugar
• 3 ounces brown sugar
• 4 ounces milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 16 ounces heavy cream
• 4 ounces sugar
• 6 ounces blackberries

A flat cake like this bakes very fast, so be sure to keep an eye on it

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper and nonstick spray.
2. Using the whip attachment on your stand mixer (or a whisk) whisk together the eggs and sugars until very light (about 4 minutes).
3. Stir a portion of the dry mixtures, followed by the vanilla and a portion of the milk into the batter, alternating until all of the ingredients are combined.
4. Spread the batter onto your prepared half sheet pan and bake for approximately 8-10 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Cool the cake until completely cool (about 30 minutes).
6. Once the cake has cooled, begin to whip the heavy cream, sprinkling in the sugar a little at a time until it is all combined. Whip this until it forms stiff peaks.
7. Spread the heavy cream over your sheet of cake. Then sprinkles the berries over the cream.
8. Carefully roll the cake, starting with the thin side.
9. Dust the finished roll with powdered sugar and keep refrigerated.

For more on how to develop your own sponge cake recipe, click here.

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Caramel Sauce 101

When I first started baking, I made the classic rookie mistake of "winging it." For those of you unfamiliar, 'winging it' is the act of baking without any sort of recipe or ratio, and is usually the result of laziness. My first experience with its disastrous consequences came about after I decided that I knew the ingredients in caramel sauce, and thus could make it without any guides. After covering my delicately prepared dessert in rock-hard amber liquid instead of the gooey, creamy sauce I had envisioned, I hung my head in shame.

Since that fateful day, I've always doggedly followed recipes for caramel. As should you. But wouldn't it be better to know the proportions (as we do for ganache) for each type of caramel? I think so. So I put together a little test using heavy cream, milk, yogurt, water, and butter as additions to the initial sugar. And I made sure to write them careful down, so as to share them with you lovely people.

All ratios assume that the weight of sugar used equals 100%. To make the caramel sauce, I cooked sugar with a splash of water and cream of tartar in a saucepan until they reached an amber color, then whisked in the test ingredient.

Test Caramels:

• Caramel #1 - 50% water: This caramel was bland and not at all creamy. It kept its shape fairly well (only minimal spreading at first) and didn't harden. For this reason, I chose not to test with a higher than 50% water content.
• Caramel #2 - 50% milk: This caramel was not creamy either, but contained burnt milk solids. It wasn't as bland as Caramel #1 and spread was roughly the same.
• Caramel #3 - 50% heavy cream: This caramel was fairly creamy, thick, and stayed fairly soft. It was gooey, and stuck to a spoon even upside down.
• Caramel #4 - 50% butter: The butter melted but would not mix fully into this caramel. The result was a very hard sugar with a thick layer of grease on top.
• Caramel #5 - 100% cream: This caramel was smooth and creamy, but stayed very soft and was not at all gooey.
• Caramel #6 - 50% yogurt: This caramel had lots of burnt milk solids, was grainy, slightly gooey, and had an odd, sour taste.
• Caramel #7 - 20% butter: This caramel was just as hard as #4, but without excess butter sitting on top.
• Caramel #8 - 30% cream: This caramel was hard, though not quite as hard as #4 or #7.

Conclusion:

Caramel #4, made with 50% heavy cream, was by far the best sauce of the group and heavy cream was the only additional ingredient which really worked. The caramel with 30% heavy cream ended up too hard, and the caramel with 100% heavy cream was very soft and runny. For a thick, gooey caramel, 40-50% is as little heavy cream as you should use. That will produce a nice thick and gooey caramel which will probably be fairly sticky. As you climb the scale toward 100%, a progressively thinner and runnier caramel will form. Over 100%, the caramel would be close to water in viscosity. This tells me that caramel needs both enough fat and water to create both softness and creamy-ness without burning or excluding the fat.

I hope everyone else found this experiment as beneficial as I did. Enjoy your caramel making, everyone!

If you liked this post, leave me a comment and let me know! And don't forget to subscribe for more just like it.

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Cheesecake Brownies

I've been making quite a few cheesecake things lately. And quite a few brownie things. And so, I come to the massive climax of these two trends: cheesecake brownies. For this recipe, I didn't want anything too fancy. I just wanted a good, quality cheesecake and a good, quality, chocolate-y brownie. And I got them. The cheesecake is has a rich taste and simple vanilla flavor, without being too heavy, and the brownies are perfectly gooey and chocolate-y.

I decided to use a brownie recipe I already had, because I knew it was the texture I wanted. So I created a little cheesecake mix-in recipe to go with it.

Ingredients:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• One batch of brownie batter

Directions:

1. First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Next, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until thoroughly combined.
3. Then add in the flour and the salt and beat until just mixed.
4. Beat in the egg.
5. Pour about half of the brownie batter into a baking dish, then add the cheesecake before topping with the rest of the brownie batter.
6. Using a butter knife, swirl together the batters, taking care not to mix them into a homogeneous batter.
7. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

These were moist and delicious, and I'd make them again in a heartbeat.

What desserts are you looking forward to as we head into fall? Any you've always wanted to know about, that you'd like to see on Confectious?

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Caramel Apple Pretzels

That's right. Caramel Apple + Pretzels. All this recipe took was a trusty pretzel recipe from Alton Brown, some apples, and a drizzle of hot caramel and perfection was achieved. They were sweet, salty, and delicious. Caramel apple fever is here, folks. Be prepared.

Pretzel recipe adapted from Alton Brown.
Ingredients:

• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1 1/2 cups water
• 6 tbsp butter
• 2 granny smith apples, diced
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp butter

Directions:

1. First, combine the flour, yeast, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer with dough hook attachment and mix to combine.
2. Next, add the water and butter before kneading approximately 7 minutes, or until the dough is smooth and not sticky.
3. Add the apples to the dough and knead just until incorporated.
4. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover. Allow it to rise for about an hour.
5. Cut the dough into 12 equal portion, roll into a long rope, and shape into pretzels (or cut into pretzel bites).
6. Preheat the oven to 450 F and place the shaped pretzels onto parchment lined sheet pans and cover while you bring 2/3 cup baking soda and 10 cups of water to boil in a large pot.
7. Boil the pretzels for approximately 30 seconds each and place them back on the parchment paper.
8. Brush the tops with egg wash, heavy cream, or water, and sprinkle a small amount of salt onto each pretzel.
9. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until the pretzels are nice and golden.
10. While the pretzels cool, add 1/3 cup water and 1 cup sugar to an oiled saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Cook the sugar until it becomes a dark amber in color, then remove from heat.
11. Promptly stir in the heavy cream and butter. Allow the caramel to cool for a few minutes.
12. Drizzle the caramel over the pretzels once you think it's cool enough not to burn your mouth (or more likely until you can't wait any longer) and enjoy.

A few simple additions turn pretzels from awesome salty snack to perfectly balanced and fun dessert.

What's your favorite fair food? The most outrageous you've come across?

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Caramel Monkey Bread

I've been promising the fiancee monkey bread for quite a while now. Except both of us kept forgetting. Somehow monkey bread or monkeys would come up and we'd both go "Oh yeah." And then promptly forget again. This time, I actually made it though. Probably just because I was on a bit of a bread kick, but no one's complaining.

The dough recipe comes from one of my favorite cook books, The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.

Ingredients:

• 3.25 oz sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2.75 oz butter
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon lemon extract
• 16 oz bread or AP flour
• 2 tsp instant yeast
• 9 oz milk
• 1 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions:

1. Cream together the butter, sugar, and salt. Once smooth, beat in the egg and lemon until smooth.
2. Add the flour, yeast, and milk, and knead until the dough passes the windowpane test.
3. Ferment for 2 hours.
4. Mix together 1 1/2 cups brown sugar and 2/3 cup heavy cream until smooth. Pour half of this mixture into the bottom of a bundt pan.
5. Cut the dough into small bites, about the size of a golf ball.
6. Mix together 2/3 cup brown sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon. Roll each ball in mixture.
7. Place the balls into the pan, not packing too tightly.
8. Pour the rest of the caramel mixture over the dough and allow to proof at room temperature until doubled in size.
9. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
10. Bake for about 20 minutes, until the bread is golden brown.

I promise I'll have more stuff on recipe development and the good 'ol Confectious you're all used to soon. In fact, I'm working on something really big right now! So stay tuned.

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Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Bars

After sitting around the hospital, waiting to see my new niece, all day, I had a lot of baking energy when I got home. And I had been planning what to make all day. I still had some chocolate chip cookies left from a few nights ago, and knew they'd make a great crumb crust. So, upon returning home, I went to work. The chocolate chip cookies worked great for a crumb crust, because they required little additional butter. The chocolate chips plus about a tablespoon of butter provided enough fat to get the crumb crust perfect, and I worked the filling out by taste.

Ingredients:

• 10 oz chocolate chip cookies
• 1 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 lb cream cheese
• 6 oz sugar
• 1 oz yogurt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 5 oz chocolate chips
• 4 oz chocolate
• 2 oz heavy cream

Directions:

1. First, process the cookies in a food processor until they get to be fine crumbs, then drizzle in the butter and pulse until combined.
2. Press this into the bottom of an 8-Inch Square Baking Dish and preheat the open to 300 degrees F.
   
3. Beat the softened cream cheese, sugar, and yogurt together until smooth.
4. Beat in the vanilla and eggs. Then mix in chocolate chips and pour onto the top of the crust.
5. Bake for approximately 30 minutes, or until just set.
6. Cool fully.
7. Scald the cream in a small saucepan.
8. Pour over chopped chocolate and whisk until smooth.
9. Immediately pour onto the top of the cheesecake bars. Allow to set, approximately 10 minutes.
10. Refrigerate or enjoy right away.

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The most viewed recipe on FoodGawker: A review

If you've ever visited the site FoodGawker (which my traffic stats tell me you probably have), you've probably seen these cookies. They're the kinda funny looking square chocolate chip cookies which are (as of this post) the most visited link from the site, and the third most favorited. So I had to try them.

Recipe can be found here.

I followed the recipe exactly (which I rarely do) and the cookies looked beautiful.

The taste, though, is not for me. I'm not a big shortbread fan. Shortbread is dry and doesn't have a lot of flavor. And, honestly, these cookies were just like every other shortbread I've tried. If you like shortbread, you might love these. I, however, did not. That's not to say anything bad about the cookies, they're just not my cup of tea.

Have you tried these? What're your thoughts?

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Egg Custard Tarts

A week or so ago, a friend sent me a link to Serious Eats' write-up on the best egg custard tarts in New York. I knew I wanted to make them right away. I've never had one, but they sounded not-too-sweet and absolutely delicious. But alas, I was neck deep in my series on cake and they got put off. Until today.

These were nice and easy (since I already had puff pastry in the freezer) and were a great late-afternoon project. The filling recipe makes enough filling for about a pound of puff pastry, rolled to about 1/4 inch thick, not counting the scraps.

Makes: Approximately 9 tarts

Ingredients:

• 1 lb puff pastry, thawed
• 4 oz water
• 4 oz evaporated milk
• 1.5 oz sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Roll out the puff pastry to 1/4 inch thick and cut rounds approximately 3 inches across (or use tartlet pans). Place the puff pastry into muffin tins, stretching the dough as little as possible. Freeze for 10 minutes.
3. Combine all remaining ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine. Fill shells with custard to about 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 15 minutes, or until custard is set.

Have you ever had these before? What's your favorite thing about egg custard tarts?

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Create a perfect sponge cake recipe in 5 minutes

I left sponge cake as the pinnacle of this series of posts for a reason. It has amazing taste and texture, and is an incredibly versatile type of cake. There are tons of wildly different sponge cake recipes out there, so you may have a hard time if you're looking to compare this to something, but I assure you, it works.

Components of a sponge cake recipe:

• Driers: In a sponge cake, you use fewer driers than you would for a shortened cake. It is possible to make a sponge cake with the same exact recipe as a creaming method cake, but it doesn't produce the best cake (and contains butter, which sponge cake normally lacks). For two 9 inch rounds, I start with about 6 oz of driers.

• Sugar: There are a few considerations to make when figuring out how much sugar to add. The amount of sugar should equal the weight of the eggs (or slightly surpass it), and should also surpass the weight of driers.

• Eggs: Generally the weight of eggs equals the weight of sugar. It is also important that it exceeds the weight of the driers.

• Liquid: Here we get to the fun part, where everything comes together. The first consideration is that the weight of liquids and eggs exceeds the weight of sugar. The combined weight of the liquids and the sugar must also be less than the combined weight of eggs and flour.

And that's it. Really, it's that easy. Be sure to remember a little bit of salt and some flavorings, and then your recipe is complete. Here's an example of a recipe created this way.

Ingredients:

• 4 oz eggs
• 4 oz sugar
• 3 oz flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 oz milk
• 1/4 tsp almond extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and prepare pans by lining the bottoms with parchment paper. Do not grease.
2. In a mixer, whip the eggs and sugar on medium-high speed until light and airy - 3-5 minutes.
3. Mix together the flour and salt and fold into the egg mixture.
4. Mix in the milk and almond extract.
5. Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for approx 15-18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

And what did I do with this cake? Made cake balls, of course.

I'm considering doing a post on the classifications of ingredients (driers, tenderizers, etc) to wrap up the series on cakes. Would anyone be interested? Leave a comment and let me know!

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Ciao Bella White Chocolate Gelato

Today we're taking a little break from our cake series, because I wanted to make something cold and this gelato is amazing. I recently picked up The Ciao Bella Book of Gelato and Sorbetto: Bold, Fresh Flavors to Make at Home and this is the first chance I've had to use it. I've never had Ciao Bella gelato before (and hadn't actually even heard of it until a few weeks ago), but I'm now a fan.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups whole milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 6 oz white chocolate, finely chopped
• 4 egg yolks
• 1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

1. Combine the milk and cream in a saucepan and heat over medium heat until scalded.
2. Add the white chocolate and whisk until smooth
3. Whisk the sugar into the egg yolks and temper by pouring a bit of hot cream while whisking.
4. Whisk the yolks back into the cream and heat over medium heat until the mixture has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon.
5. Chill in an ice bath, then overnight in the fridge.
6. Churn in an ice cream maker and then freeze for at least 4 hours.

This isn't any sort of paid advertisement, but you should go get the book.

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Angel Food Cake - Recipe Development for everyone

Continuing our series on cake, today we're going to knock angel food cake out of the park. Looking back, this probably should have been the first post in the series, because it's so easy. You ready for this?

First, use equal weights egg whites and sugar. Then, use 1/3 of that weight in driers (flour, cocoa powder, etc). And that's about it. Really. I mean, you should add some things like a little bit of salt and a touch of vanilla extract, too, but it's honestly that simple. Here, I'll make one up right now:

Berry Angel Food Cake

• 10 oz egg whites
• 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
• 10 oz sugar
• 3 tsp strawberry extract (I don't figure most people have this lying around, so you can also use vanilla)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3.2 oz flour (Preferably cake)
• 2 cup fresh berries
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 cup sugar

1. First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Whip the egg whites with the cream of tartar, salt, and extract. Sprinkle in the sugar and whip until  stiff peaks form.
3. Sift the flour over the egg whites and fold in "gently but quickly."
4. Pour into an angel food cake pan and smooth out the top.
5. Bake for approx. 40 minutes, or until the top is golden and a cake tester (toothpick or paring knife) comes out clean.
6. Turn the pan upside down to cool. To remove, run a knife along the sides.
7. Whip up the cream, sugar, and about 1/4  of the berries until stiff peaks form.
8. Fill the cake, frost the cake, and enjoy the cake.

See how we got there? Egg whites, a little bit of cream of tartar to help the egg whites whip up, equal weight of sugar, a little bit of flavor from the extract and the salt, and 1/3 of the weight of the eggs in flour. It really is as easy as that. Take the next two minutes and write your own recipe (don't be afraid to spice it up a bit) and then comment and tell me how painless it was. Then, when you bake the cake and your guests ask where you got the recipe, puff out your chest and tell them you created it yourself!

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Butter Cakes and You - Recipe Development for everyone

I've got a new focus for the blog (and from the sounds of it, you're all down too): recipe development. It's something I've been really into lately, and I firmly believe that coming up with your own recipes (which actually work and taste great) is something everyone can do without spending hours and hours on them. So right now, we're digging into cakes! I posted a little bit about this a few days ago in my Chocolate Zucchini Cake post, but I'd like to go into a bit more, and look at another cake formula which follows the same rules.

We'll go on to look at other types of cake later, but for now, we'll master the classic butter cakes. Pound cake, "shortened" cakes, and most other cakes that use the creaming method fit in this category.

Flour:

I always start a recipe with flour. For two cakes 9 inch rounds, I usually start with 2 cups of flour. Flour, in the world of cake ingredients, is known as a drier. This means that it gives structure and body to a cake. In the world of cake ingredients, there are also other common driers. Specifically things like cocoa powder.  Because they behave similarly, you can substitute other driers for part of your flour in a cake. It is important to do exactly that, though, and substitute. If you simply add cocoa powder to the 2 cups of flour you need for two 9 inch rounds, you'll end up with dry, tough cake. But if you follow the rules and use 2 cups of driers, you can substitute no problem. (Note: You still need to use a good amount of flour itself, however, for structural purposes.) The driers are also the one set of ingredients in cakes that you need to know both the weight and volume of.

(Note: In an ideal world, we'd all use cake flour for almost every cake, but I do realize that many of us don't really have access to it, and many of us don't like to keep uni-taskers (to borrow from Alton Brown) around. Your cake should turn out no matter which flour you use.)

Other Dry ingredients:

When I say other dry ingredients, I really mean leaveners and salt. The leaveners are the reason it is important to know the volume of the flour. To leaven one cup of flour, you need about 1 1/4 tsp of baking powder, or 1/4 tsp of baking soda. My leavener of choice is usually baking powder, unless I'm making something like a lemon cake, where I want the flavor of lemons to shine through without so much acid. Then I use baking soda, because it counteracts some of the acid in a cake. Salt is a bit more of a grey area. I usually add somewhere between 1/4 tsp and 1/2 tsp for two cups of flour, depending on the flavor of the cake. Salt in a sweet brings the flavors to the perfect level for our taste buds. Salt adds a lot to caramel or chocolate flavor, but too much salt is easily tasted in flavors like vanilla.

Sugar:

In a cake made by creaming butter and sugar together, sugar plays a greater role than just sweetening and tenderizing. Sugar is needed to trap air bubbles in the butter, which gives the cake part of its leavening. For this reason, a good amount of granulated sugar is needed. Some honey, molasses, etc can be substituted, but not much. For this style of cake, the total amount of sugars (granulated or liquid) should be equal to or slightly less than the weight of the driers. 

Eggs:

Eggs play a few different roles in cake balancing. the give structure, they moisten, they tenderize, and they leaven. The nice thing about eggs in a cake recipe is that you don't have too much choice. The weight of the eggs and the liquid combined should be equal to the weight of the driers. In this case that would mean about six eggs is equal to the weight of flour for two 9 inch rounds. But to add this many eggs would mean that you could add no liquid. Normally I try keep eggs at no more than 50% of the weight of the flour, because otherwise you have a very thick batter and are likely to get too tough of a case. 

Liquid:

Using the rule of liquids and eggs combined weighing as much as the flour, the liquid is then easy to figure out by subtracting the weight of the eggs from the weight of the flour. Common liquids for cakes are milk, buttermilk, and sour cream, but get creative! This is a great place to introduce flavors.

Butter:

Shortening is definitely NOT an option. But the amount of butter is easy to figure out, too. The weight of the butter in a cake recipe should be equal to the weight of the eggs.

And it really is that simple. Cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs, and alternately mix in the dry ingredients and liquids. It'll take you maybe 5 minutes to write your own cake recipe using this method. I don't know about you, but I've spent a lot longer searching blogs for cake recipes.

So here's an example recipe that I came up with while writing this post. They're s'mores cupcakes, before summer ends and we all move on to holiday desserts.

Recipe:

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 3 graham crackers (this comes out to 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs)
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 5 oz butter, softened
• 6 oz granulated sugar
• 2 oz brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 4 oz milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 oz honey
• 3 oz chocolate chips
• 3 egg whites
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a food processor, process the graham crackers until they are a fine powder.
3. Whisk together the flour, graham crackers, baking powder, and salt.
4. Cream together the butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
5. Add the eggs to the butter, one at a time, scraping the bowl between additions.
6. Add half of the dry ingredients and beat until just combined, then alternate in the wet ingredients (milk, vanilla, and honey) with the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix in the chocolate chips and spoon into prepared cupcake tins.
7. Bake for approximately 15 minutes and allow to cool.
8. Over a double boiler, gently stir together the egg whites and 3/4 cup sugar until they reach 140 degrees. Then transfer to a mixer and beat until stiff peaks form.
9. Pipe meringue onto cooled cupcakes and toast with a torch.

Texture-wise, the cakes turned out great. Taste-wise? Equally great. I would probably up the amount of brown sugar and lower the granulated a bit, as well as put a little more graham cracker instead of some of the flour, but I had a hit (according to my wonderful fiance [yes, I still pretend her opinion is unbiased]) the first time around. So please, friends, next time you go to make a cake or cupcakes, try this out! Then comment and let me know how it went for you.

Anything you're confused about?

Any special topics you'd like to see in future recipe-development posts?

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Developing a recipe for Zucchini Chocolate Cake

In the next few posts we're going to look at recipe development (since apparently you're all into that sort of thing). Specifically developing recipes for cakes. I'll go into a little more detail on the balancing of it all later, but here's a look at my process for developing a chocolate zucchini cake recipe.

If you have a garden with a zucchini plant in it, you understand the need to find new things to do with zucchini.

I started coming up with my recipe by choosing a flour amount. I decided two cups would probably make a cake size I'd be happy with. But since I wanted it to be chocolate, I substituted 1/2 cup of the flour for cocoa powder. To leaven that 2 cups of dry ingredients, I knew I needed about 2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, so that's what I wrote down next. Salt is sometimes a tricky ingredient. Most of us know that it needs to go in there somewhere, even in a sweet recipe, but have no idea how much to put in. Just the other day someone on my twitter feed was complaining about people writing recipes calling for "a pinch" of salt, because desserts really do need a bit more salt than that. I decided to start with 1/4 teaspoon, which is usually a pretty good bet. Now that my dry ingredients are out of the way, I move on.

To determine how much of the other ingredients I need, I first need to weigh my flour (in this case flour and cocoa powder). It weighs about 9 1/2 ounces. For a normal (shortened) American-style cake, I add an equal weight of sugar. I figure that the average cake in this style has 3-4 eggs. I go for 4 and figure that each weighs about 1.67 oz. Together that's about 6.7 oz of eggs. I subtract that from the weight of my flour (9.5 oz) to get the weight of liquid that I should add. I write down 2.7 oz of liquids. I decide to go with 2 oz of milk, and rely on my zucchini for the other .7 oz of liquid. I add 1 cup grated zucchini to the recipe.

Finally, I figure the fat. I want to use butter and a tiny bit of melted chocolate. In this style of cake, I want  a good amount of fat. I go for 6 oz of butter and about 1 oz of melted chocolate.

And there I have my initial, pre-testing recipe.

• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 cups AP flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 6 oz butter, softened
• 1 oz chocolate, melted
• 9.5 oz sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup zucchini, grated
• 2 oz milk

Then the steps were as follows: preheat the oven to 350, cream the butter, sugar, and chocolate, mix dry ingredients together, beat the eggs into the butter, add the zucchini, alternately mix in the dry ingredients and the milk.

About 20 minutes later, when it came out of the oven. I could tell the cake was going to be soft and moist. I frosted and decorated it and dug in. Then came time to change the recipe. My two critiques were that it wasn't quite chocolatey enough (although that was remedied with chocolate buttercream) and that there wasn't quite enough zucchini.

I think next time I'll up the zucchini to 1 and a half cups and up the cocoa powder to 3/4 cup, changing the flour to 1 1/4 cup.

More to come on developing your own recipes for cake (including sponge and angel food)!

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