Caramel Filled Brownies

Caramel Filled Brownies

These are some of the most decadent brownies I’ve ever made or had the pleasure to eat. They are full of chocolate, caramel and nuts, and it just about doesn’t get any better than that!

I followed the recipe from Cookie Madness pretty closely. I used regular butter instead of unsalted butter and decreased the salt by 1/4 tsp. I had the pleasure of using Abdallah caramel instead of unwrapping individual pieces of caramel. The Abdallah caramel appeared at my local grocery store this fall and I was hoping to get a chance to bake with it before it disappears from the shelves.

Every fall my sister-in-law treats the family to caramel apples from Abdallah Candies. When I saw that they were packaging caramel apple kits, I knew how convenient the caramel would be for baking. Wouldn’t it be great if they market it year-round instead of just in the fall?

My tips for making these brownies in addition to the directions from Cookie Madness are to use a teaspoon to scoop small spoonfuls of brownie dough over the caramel layer and then spread it out.  The other tip is not to panic if you dare to cut into these before they are completely cool. They will seem very gooey if you do that, but if you’re patient and let them cool all the way and then chill them before cutting you’ll see that it all comes together in a wonderful way. It’s interesting to note that the sugar and eggs are beaten for a full three minutes in this recipe before incorporating the remaining ingredients.

I made these late yesterday afternoon, and my husband started sampling them before they were cool all the way. That’s a testament to how good they are. He says they’re even better today than they were yesterday. What I know is that they’re just wonderful today. The brownies take a little time to put together but they are definitely worth it for a special treat.
Enjoy!

Back in the kitchen

October was as much of a whirlwind as I expected it to be. I believe I was out of town more days than I was home. All that traveling and eating out made me want to come home and eat basics. Oatmeal, fresh fruit, toast. I’m just now getting around to wanting some time in the kitchen.

An interesting recipe that I didn’t blog about but is worth sharing is this recipe for Southwestern Stuffed Acorn Squash from Eating Well. I love that the recipe delivers a lot of flavor without the fat and sugar from the way I usually make it. I subbed Monterery Jack for the Swiss, but otherwise pretty much followed the recipe. It’s also worth noting that it reheats well.

Today I’m going to talk about biscotti. This is not at all what I had in mind when I set out to make biscotti, but I had these ingredients and didn’t want to run to the grocery store to get other things. The Biscotti di Prato I blogged about back in January were better than these in my opinion, but I would make these again to satisfy a need for a bit of sweet, with a bit of tang, in a good crunchy satisfying cookie.

The original recipe is from Cooking Light. I made a few modifications. I really wanted to add pecans, and I intentionally added more oil. I’m glad I did because I don’t think I would have gotten these to come together without it. Even with the added oil I had to work at it to get them to come together enough to shape into logs. I also felt they would be a little blah without something more in the way of flavoring so I added some cinnamon. My original plan was to drizzle these with white chocolate but I decided they didn’t need it, and I’m saving the white chocolate for another recipe another day.

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Biscotti with Pecans (adapted by Sue)
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup toasted, chopped pecans

Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with non stick baking parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer whisk together the dry ingredients. In a small bowl, whisk together the oil, vanilla, and eggs. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are thoroughly wet. The mixture will be crumbly. Add the cranberries, chocolate chips, and pecans and mix until evenly distributed.
Turn the mixture out onto a lightly floured surface and mix the ingredients with your hands until bigger chunks start to cling together. Divide the dough in half and make two rolls each about 8 inches in length. Transfer the rolls to the parchment paper and press the logs into pieces that are about 1 inch thick.
Bake for 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
Remove the logs from the oven and allow them to cool on a rack for 10 minutes.
Cut the logs at 1/2 inch intervals and stand the cookies up on the unlined baking sheet. Bake for another 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove the cookies from the baking sheet and allow to cool completely.

Yield: 26 cookies

Lemon Bliss Cake

Lemon Bliss Cake

Tomorrow morning bright and early I leave for Houston. I’m looking forward to the trip even though technically it’s work related. While doing laundry and packing I decided I could multi task and use up the lemons in the refrigerator. I turned to the King Arthur Flour website to find a recipe in a hurry and found this recipe for Lemon Bliss Cake. It’s easy and very good. The crumb is very fine and moist and the lemon flavor shines without being too tangy. I had all of the ingredients on hand so it was the perfect recipe to make while doing other things.

My only deviations from the recipe involved baking time and the glaze. My bundt cake pan is dark and I think the cake baked faster because of that. It was done in 45 minutes. For the glaze I juiced both lemons which gave me about 4 oz. of juice so I added a little more sugar and used all the juice. I used superfine sugar because I thought it might dissolve more completely. There aren’t any crystals, so I guess the superfine sugar did what I had hoped.

Houston Bound

On Thursday I will be going to Houston to attend Quilt Market. I’ll be super busy while I’m there but on the off chance that I get to seek out some good food is there anyplace that I shouldn’t miss?

Banana Oat Muffins

These are fairly healthy stick to your ribs fare. They aren’t very sweet, and they’re not too high in fat. In other words they’re the kind of muffin you can eat for breakfast, or serve as a snack and feel like you’ve offered some good nutritious food instead of a cupcake masquerading as a muffin.

No doubt there are people who buy bananas specifically for baking, but when I bake with bananas it’s because I purchased too many and if I don’t bake with them or stick them in the freezer for smoothies they’re going to go to waste. I also had some yogurt to use up. You’d think with that combo that I would have made a smoothie and popped the rest of the bananas in the freezer, but I couldn’t let go of the idea of a banana muffin using yogurt. You could make these even lower in fat by leaving out the walnuts, but I wanted the crunch, and I’m starting to appreciate walnuts more than I did in the past. You could probably add in a few chocolate chips and have a muffin that tastes more like a treat.

I’d like to try some honey in these instead of the brown sugar. Next time….

Banana Oat Muffins (adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites)

1 c. unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
3/4 c. ground rolled oats
1/2 c. chopped walnuts
2-3 ripe bananas
1 egg
2 T. vegetable oil
1/2 c. plain non-fat yogurt
1 egg white

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Lightly spray a muffin tin with cooking spray. (I used silicone cupcake liners and have learned NOT to spray them.)
Whisk together the first six ingredients. Process the oats in a food processor until you have a course flour. Whisk the oats into the other dry ingredients. Stir in the walnuts.
Break the bananas into chunks and process in the food processor. (I used 2 1/2 bananas) Blend in the yogurt, oil and the egg.
In a separate bowl beat the egg until it becomes white and foamy but not stiff.
Fold the banana mixture and the beaten egg white into the dry ingredients until all of the dry ingredients are incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the muffin should come out clean. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan, and then remove to a wire rack until completely cooled.

September baking

Here we are observing the last day of September. It’s been a super busy month for me and I wanted to let you know that I’m still here and have good intentions of getting some baking related things posted to the blog. While I catch my breath I’ll let you know about some of things I’ve recently baked.

Earlier this month I mentioned that my two children both celebrate September birthdays. I managed to get my son’s birthday cake on the blog, but so far haven’t gotten my daughter’s cake on the web. She requested something “chocolatey” with “really good frosting”. I was tempted to make my “go to” chocolate cake from “Applehood and Motherpie”. The recipe came to me years ago via my sister-in-law who is originally from the Rochester, NY area. However, I was in the mood to try something new and different. If you’ve been reading this blog you know I try a lot of recipes from Cookie Madness, King Arthur Flour, Cook’s Illustrated, as well as a few other tried and true sources. The Sour Cream Fudge Layer Cake on page 362 of Baking Illustrated won out, and we were all glad it did. The cake is smooth, rich, and chocolatey. The chocolate butter icing is the perfect compliment to the cake and from someone who doesn’t love frosting or icings that says a lot. Someone posted the recipe here.

Sour Cream Fudge Layer Cake

Another thing I made to celebrate birthdays was another chocolate cupcake. This time I used the Favorite Fudge Birthday Cake recipe from King Arthur Flour. I liked these better than the cupcakes I recently wrote about from Food and Wine. The texture was better and I liked the chocolate flavor better. I was so happy to give them to my daughter to share with her bicycle racing friends. I was told that her team likes having a teammate whose Mom likes to bake.

Chocolate Cupcake from KA Flour recipe

Split view so you can see how nicely they dome.

This past weekend I made some of the best homemade pizza I’ve ever made. I ordered the Perfect Pizza Blend from King Arthur Flour and it’s almost like magic. I used the recipe provided on the bag of flour. The dough was so easy to work with and the crust was crispy and flavorful. I will definitely try to keep a supply of this on hand as we like to make our own pizza and their flour mixture truly made a difference in the end result. I don’t have any pictures of the finished product, but don’t hesitate to try it out for yourself.

Homemade bagels were also on the agenda this past weekend. We had guests to help us eat up the pizza and bagels so don’t worry about the two of us looking as round as pizza and bagels! The bagels were interesting. They tasted good, and the crust was thin and slightly crispy, but they seemed too moist. The best bagel I’ve ever had is a Bruegger’s Bagel. I understand that in the eyes of those who know their bagels, they don’t even count as real bagels, but in the upper midwest there aren’t a lot of good bagels to be had. The homemade bagels were very good, but they weren’t quite what I expected. I’ll try them again someday but I’m going to do a lot more research before I dive in again. I got the recipe here. Once again, I have no photos, but I did have happy guests with full tummys who were in awe that I could or would make homemade bagels for them.

Two weekends ago I made these Sticky Buns again to share with twelve friends for brunch one Sunday morning. I can’t recommend this recipe enough. They are so simple, and everyone loves them.

I’m going to be gone a lot in October, but I’ll be home just enough to do some baking so don’t forget to stop by and say hello.

Muffins and Birthday Cake

Our son was home for a few days before the fall term starts. It was great to have him here!

While he was here we celebrated his 20th birthday. Hard to believe that we no longer have a teenager! For his birthday celebration I made an angel food cake per his request. The pictures aren’t very good. They were taken at night with poor, funky lighting, but the cake tasted great. The recipe is from Baking Illustrated and I will definitely make it again. This time I used frozen egg whites that we’ve been saving when we have an ice cream recipe that calls for yolks. The frozen egg whites worked fine but next time I’d like to try it with fresh egg whites just to see if there is a difference. You can see the recipe here. The original recipe calls for lemon juice too, but I omitted that. It just doesn’t seem like it belongs in angel food cake. For the icing I used the Fluffy White Icing from the America’s Test Kitchen’s Ultimate Lemon Layer Cake. This is the ultimate fluffy white icing in my opinion. The recipe has already been posted here, and once again I omitted the lemon juice that the original recipe calls for.

You can see that I didn’t beat the icing long enough. The peaks should be a bit firmer, but it tasted good and had a lovely shine.

Angel Food Birthday Cake

Sliced Angel Food Cake

I also made some muffins while he was here. Sadly there are no pictures of them, but you can see the recipe here. It’s a good basic muffin recipe. I made them with fresh peaches and a streusel topping. Half of the muffins were plain streusel the other half had pecans in the streusel. I was out of eggs so I subbed some reconstituted dried egg whites and the muffins turned out fine. If you click over to the recipe you’ll see that there are a lot of variations listed. The recipe looks to be exactly the way it is written in the book so it’s worth looking at. With all of the variations listed you’re sure to hit on something you like.

I also made a loaf of honey white bread, our son’s favorite, and sent that with him without taking a picture.

I hope you all had a wonderful labor day weekend!

Chocolate Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes

I’ve been on the lookout for a reliable chocolate cupcake recipe and I believe I’ve found it in this recipe. The cupcakes have a tight, moist crumb, and and are chocolaty, but not over the top. The original recipe comes from Food and Wine. I made a few minor changes so I’ll write up the recipe as I made it. I made a different frosting recipe as well and while it was good I think it overpowered the cupcakes. I’d like to try the cupcakes with a plain vanilla frosting and see how the chocolate and vanilla play off one another.

I baked my cupcakes in silicone cupcake molds, which I sprayed with vegetable oil cooking spray. They slipped right out of the molds, but next time I’ll use paper liners. It seems that the batter had nothing to cling to as the cupcakes rose while baking so while they had nice little domes some of them were a bit off center due to slipping around in the cupcake molds.

Chocolate Cupcakes from Food and Wine with changes
4 T. butter ( I used salted)
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. water
1 c. all-purpose flour
1 c. sugar
1/4 c. plus 2 T. cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
1 t. espresso powder
3/4 t. baking soda
dash of salt
1 large egg
1/4 c. yogurt
1 t. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray silicone cupcake molds with vegetable cooking spray and place on a baking sheet.
Measure vegetable oil and water in a glass measuring cup and add the butter. Warm in the microwave until the butter is almost melted. Set aside.
Into a mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa, espresso powder, baking soda and salt. Add the egg and beat thoroughly. Add the butter mixture and beat thoroughly, scraping the bowl. Add the yogurt and vanilla and beat thoroughly scraping the bowl.
Divide the batter evenly into the prepared cupcake molds and bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean after testing.
Let the cupcakes cool in the molds for 2-3 minutes and then tip them out of the molds to cool completely on a wire rack.

Chocolate Frosting
4 T. butter
1/3 c. cocoa powder
1 t. espresso powder
1.5 c. powdered sugar
2.5 T. milk
1/2 t. vanilla

Melt the butter in a glass mixing bowl. Stir in cocoa and espresso until completely incorporated into the butter. Add 1/2 of the milk and mix, then 1/2 of the powdered sugar and mix. Repeat until all of the milk and powdered sugar are mixed in. Stir in the vanilla and beat until smooth and creamy.

Frost the completely cooled cupcakes.

Wine

This post is as much for myself as it is for all of you. I enjoy a glass of wine from time to time, and when I indulge I like to know that it’s going to be a worthwhile indulgence. The problem is that I don’t really know anything about wine. Sometimes I stand at the liquor store looking at all of the options and have little idea which bottle to walk out the door with. Yesterday I considered buying a bottle of Pinot Noir, but walked out of the liquor store empty handed because they didn’t have either of the two that I’ve enjoyed in the past and I didn’t want to waste the money on something that I’d end up pouring down the sink or figuring out a way to bake into something.
This morning when I ought to be doing something more productive I’m sitting here at the computer and I stumbled upon this site. There is a plethora of information there and now I feel like I can read up before I head out to purchase a bottle, and hopefully that purchase will be a little more thoughtful and tasty than in the past.
Are there places on the Internet that you’ve found helpful to learn more about wine? If so, I’d love to know about them. Feel free to post links in the comment section.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

As soon as I tasted these cookies I was pretty sure I had already tried a very similar recipe. Closer inspection revealed that my taste bud memory was accurate.

These are very good peanut cookies. That said I have a few other thoughts about them. I don’t think the chocolate chips added a lot. Yes, you know they’re there but these cookies are all about the peanut butter. The roll in the sugar is sort of pretty and adds a bit of crunch but omitting the milk yields a slightly firmer cookie and a bit more crunch without sacrificing too much to texture.

I would make these again if asked, but left to my own devices I would either make the One Bowl Criss Cross Peanut Butter cookies from Cookie Madness, or my old standby peanut butter cookie recipe that came with my Kitchen Aid mixer years ago.

Today’s recipe came from Smitten Kitchen. Compare them to this recipe from Cookie Madness and you’ll see the similarities.

At stack of cookies