I Heart Standard Baking

Yum.

Errands this morning included a stop at Standard Baking here in Portland. This is one of the many food gems to be found in our great little city. Always a difficult decision, we settled on the fruit buckle.

It was still warm.

Nice crumb topping that didn't completely fall off as we ate it. Stuffed full of raspberries, with a dough that had a bit of a lemon tang.  Delicious.

Here's the aftermath of our delectable treat.

(Recycled) Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies

Tonight, baking was more compelling than the work homework that I should have been doing. I hadn't made an oatmeal type of cookie in awhile and was jonesing on one with chocolate and coconut in it.

As I dug through the pantry, I realized that I didn't have all the chocolate chips that I needed. Hmmm. There were some chips, there was a chunk of dark chocolate, there was a chunk of white chocolate (both leftover from my chocolate bark from a few weeks ago). This wasn't quite enough, so I was pondering other add-ins, such as cranberries or cocoa nibs.

It was at this point that Tom reminded me that I had some chocolate chip cookie dough in the freezer (from a failed recipe experiment). The dough was not a success, but the consistency of it made it quite easy to pull out the chocolate chips (they were large and good quality). Yes, I pulled chocolate chips out of dough to re-use the chips in another cookie. I had been considering just tossing the remaining dough, so I thought that this was a good re-use, recycle approach to baking - and it is almost Earth Day.

About the time that I could no longer feel my finger tips, I had enough chip-age, in all of my varieties for the cookies. Finally, on to the baking!

Numb fingers have paid off, and I've hit my quantity.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Coconut Cookies
Ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (all purpose is fine too)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes
12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (or alternatively, a combination of chips pulled from frozen dough, a partial bag of chips and leftover white and dark chunks, chopped into small chunks).

What to do   

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.In a large bowl, beat together butter and sugars until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and beat well. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat until well combined. Stir in oats, coconut, and chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets (or line sheets with parchment paper) and bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool for a minute on baking sheet then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Orange Flavored Olive Oil Cake

Spring is making a shy appearance here in Maine. After perhaps the best April Fool's joke ever with a Nor'easter that dropped about 6 inches of snow in my yard, our temps have been climbing slowly.

We took advantage of the low 50's temps this weekend to have some much needed outdoor time. Tom took me on my first motorcycle ride of the spring on Saturday. I was safe and spiffy in my new helmet, gloves and jacket. Today was people-powered cycling, getting our road bikes out for a spin. Our shakedown ride to get the winter out of our legs ended up being a 23 miler. It was great to be out, the roads were in decent shape and other than very cold toes, I felt great at the end of the ride.

Ok, back to baking. We were having some friends for dinner Saturday night, and I had been wanting to try making an olive oil cake. I checked out a few different recipes and found this one on the Saveur site. I really like this site. It's comprehensive, providing both Saveur recipes, but also recipes they've found across the web. Great pictures make the recipes hard to resist.

I happened to have some blood orange olive oil on hand, so I thought that would be a good alternative to plain olive oil, and punch up the orange a bit.

To dress this up a bit, I decided to serve it with a blueberry sauce and honey whip cream. For a garnish, I attempted candied basil leaves.  The basil tasted good, but I was hoping they'd firm up a bit. My friend suggested dipping the leaves in slightly whipped egg whites before sugaring them next time.

The orange flavor in the cake was subtle, but noticeable, and the cake nice and moist. The berries and whip cream were a great add, and everyone finished happy and full.

Olive Oil Cake (from Saveur)
Ingredients
1 tbsp. butter
3 cups plus 2 tbsp. flour
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1⁄4 tsp. lemon zest
3⁄4 cup quality extra-virgin olive oil
2⁄3 cup milk
3 tbsp. Grand Marnier
1 tbsp. baking powder


Blueberry Sauce and Honey Whip Cream instructions are below.





What to do:
Preheat oven to 325°. Grease an 11-cup bundt pan with butter and dust with flour. Set prepared pan aside.

Beat eggs and sugar together in a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add remaining 3 cups flour, lemon zest, oil, milk, and liqueur and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add baking powder and stir until thoroughly combined.

Spoon batter into prepared pan around ramekin or bowl or spoon batter into bundt pan and smooth out top with the back of the spoon. Bake until cake is deep golden brown and a wooden skewer inserted in center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Transfer cake to a wire rack to let cool completely, in its pan.

Blueberry Sauce
Mix frozen (thawed) or fresh berries with some orange zest, the juice of half and orange and about 1/2 tbsp of honey. Heat on the stove over medium heat to reduce and thicken the sauce to your liking.

Honey Whip Cream
While mixing heavy cream, add 1-2 tsp of vanilla and then honey to taste. I warmed the honey up before adding to the cream, in order to help it incorporate better.

This cake is one of those that you'd be able to serve anytime of day. I think it would work well as a breakfast bread, definitely a mid-day tea or coffee snack cake, and dressed up for dinner with a good fruit topping and whip cream.

The sauce was blueberries, orange zest and juice and honey.

Crock Pot Banana Bread

Despite my best intentions, I'm an infrequent user of the crock-pot. It sits tucked away on a high pantry shelf, making access at best difficult and at worst, dangerous. The heavy glass lid threatens to fall on my head whenever I pull it down, and this scares me.

The most common applications for the CP in my kitchen are making apple or pear sauce, cooking farro overnight (makes for a great "instant" breakfast) or making a kick-ass bolognese sauce.

The best application though, is Crock-Pot Banana Bread. I'd never heard of such a thing until my husband made a batch in his CP while we were dating. He's the banana bread baker in the house, and has dabbled with and perfected this recipe. This banana bread is perhaps the favorite care package item mailed off to college, in great risk of not even making it in the door before consumption.

It's baked in this funky round "pan" that sits in the CP, and looks a bit like a big coffee can. I don't know if this insert comes standard with crock-pots or is a charming accessory. It makes a cylindrical loaf, and fun half-round slices. Cooking time is about 2 hours or so. The slow heat makes for a very moist bread, not as dense as pan based banana breads. Mini-chocolate chips (never optional), add to the deliciousness of this treat.

The size and shape of this loaf would also lend itself to a great little banana cake. I think it could probably be sliced into 3 or 4 layers, frosted with any number of frosting options...chocolate, rum butter-cream, some type of brown-butter cinnamon.....mmmm. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm looking forward to that adventure in the kitchen.

Crock Pot Banana Bread

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
4 small ripe bananas, mashed
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2+ cup dark chocolate chunks 

What to do
Turn crock-pot on high. Grease and flour manufacturer's insert. Mix flour, baking soda and salt in medium bowl. In another bowl, cream applesauce with butter & sugar. Add eggs, one at a time. Add milk and vanilla. Mix completely. Stir in bananas until well mixed. Gradually add flour mixture. Stir until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Place insert into crock-pot. Carefully add batter. Cover. Put lid on crock-pot and bake, checking for done-ness at the 2 hour mark. Our crock-pot usually bakes this loaf in 2 hours or just a bit over. 

Brownies!

If I could only have one form of dessert for the rest of my life, the brownie would be a serious contender for the top spot. Yes, pies are delightful, cookies are comforting, and cake is festive. But when it comes right down to an immensely satisfying form of chocolate baked goodness, there is nothing really close.

Most of my formative batter licking experiences happened while making brownies. Truth be told there was more than one occasion, when baking with a childhood friend, the brownies never actually got baked. 

I like most any brownie. The boxed mix variety with those squeezey chocolate packets were my brownie of choice for a long time. I loved very gently picking up the chunks of dry mix (they crumbled very easily, remember?) and eating them. The only brownie that has no place for me is the cakey brownie. I mean seriously, a cakey brownie? If you want a cakey brownie, make CAKE for cripes sake. And don't get me started on nuts in brownies. I'll take a nut in my chocolate chip cookie sooner than in my brownie. If you are looking for a nut-brownie recipe it is not here.

But better than a squeezey chocolate packet brownie mix brownie is the homemade from scratch (or as my brother-in-law calls it, from itch) brownie. There is no shortage of great recipes here. The Moosewood cookbook has a good one and you feel somewhat righteous making it because of the source. I just Googled "brownies from scratch" and got 183,000,000 results in .12 seconds. I've made a handful of different brownie recipes, the more recent ones I've tried are recipes that call for cocoa powder vs. melted chocolate.  I like the cocoa powder recipes better, at some point maybe I'll try side by side taste test. At any rate, I tend to go for the cocoa powder recipes, since those ingredients tend to be in my pantry. If I have a chunk of chocolate suitable for melting, it usually gets hacked up and eaten bit by bit. This is not a problem with cocoa powder.

The brownies I made yesterday came from Fine Cooking. I've jazzed them up in the past with things like instant espresso powder, ganache topping and the like. On their own, these brownies deliver that great dense chocolaty punch that you can't get anywhere but in a brownie.

Watch your time carefully on these, they are meant to be dense and not overcooked.

Fudgy Brownies (from Fine Cooking magazine)
Ingredients
12 oz. (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, cut into 9 pieces; more softened for the pan
3-3/4 oz. (1-1/4 cups) unsweetened natural cocoa powder, sifted if lumpy
2-3/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. table salt
5 large eggs
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
7-1/2 oz. (1-2/3 cups) all-purpose flour 

What to Do
Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 325°F. Line the bottom & sides of a 9x13-inch straight-sided metal baking pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil, leaving about a 2-inch overhang on the short sides. Lightly butter the foil.

Put the butter in a large (4-quart) saucepan over medium-low heat and stir occasionally until melted, about 2 minutes. Off the heat, whisk in the cocoa powder until smooth, 1 minute. Add the sugar and salt, and whisk until well blended. Use your fingertip to check the temperature of the batter—it should be warm, not hot. If it’s hot, set the pan aside for a minute or two before continuing.

Whisk in the eggs, two and then three at a time, until just blended. Whisk in the vanilla until the batter is well blended. Sprinkle the flour over the batter and stir with a rubber spatula until just blended.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with small bits of brownie sticking to it, 35 to 45 minutes. Cool the brownies completely in the pan on a rack, about 3 hours.

When the brownies are cool, use the foil overhang to lift them from the pan. Invert onto a cutting board and carefully peel away the foil. Flip again and cut into 24 squares. Serve immediately or wrap in plastic and store at room temperature for up to 3 days. They can also be frozen in an airtight container or freezer bag for up to 1 month.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (dare I say perfect?)

After my mediocre CCC experiment the other day (let's be honest, those cookies kind of sucked), I went back to the  Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from the New York Times article that I referenced in a recent post. These cookies did not disappoint. They came out thick, with crispy outside and chewy-gooey chocolate-y insides.

I think the key to this cookie's goodness is the aging process. The article explains the chemistry at work here, but there are also flavor development processes going on. Think of your stews, soups and meatloaves. Almost universally, these are better the second or third day than they are when first cooked. Same with these cookies. The rest time lets the flavors meld and deepen - the article describes the 36 hour cookie, in comparison with cookies from younger dough like this: "they had an even richer, more sophisticated taste, with stronger toffee hints and a definite brown sugar presence."

I mixed up the dough for these cookies Sunday afternoon and baked them Tuesday night. They were over the 36 hours, as I baked them at around the 50 hour mark. While the dough aged temptingly in the fridge, we started calling it "the entity" as it was a sizeable mound and beckoned with a siren's call.

Then, after all that, I messed up in the baking. But, like many mistakes, I think I ended up with a happy accident. These cookies are supposed to bake at 350. I wasn't looking when I set the oven and it wasn't until after I took them out that I realized the oven was at 450. The outside got pretty golden brown, but the insides were still gooey. Since this is my preference, I'd gladly make this mistake again.

By a small miracle of exceptional will-power, all of  these cookies (minus the 2 - 1/2 that Tom & I had to sample) got bundled up and delivered to my brother this morning for his birthday. A very happy and delicious ending to a Chocolate Chip Cookie quest that included 2 different doughs, about 4 bags of chips and lots of happy sampling.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(From the New York Times article, "Perfection? Hint: It's Warm and has a Secret" and recipe adapted from Jacques Torres)
Notes about my adaptations follow the recipe

Ingredients

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (this is 8-1/2 ounces) cake flour
1 -2/3 cups (this is 8 1/2 ounces) bread flour
1-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2-1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1-1/4 cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (see note)
Sea salt.

What to Do

1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.
4. Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.
Yield: 1 1/2 dozen 5-inch cookies.

Notes about My Adaptations

Flour - I didn't use cake flour. I used all purpose flour and bread flour. I think you will get slightly different results using only AP flour, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. I did weigh my flours, as I think you get a more accurate quantity that way.

Chocolate - I didn't use the disks. I had 2 types of semisweet chocolate chips (Ghiradelli & Guittard), but I did use 1-1/4 lbs of chips. Holy crap.

Size - I baked a standard size cookie, not the jumbo version described here. Should I even bother trying to be moderate when using 1-1/4 lbs of chocolate and lots of butter?

Bake Temp & Time: I accidentally baked at 450 instead of 350. At that higher temp, the (smaller) cookies took about 11 min. I'd guess that at 350, they'd be more like 12-14 min. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie update

 Following up from my earlier post with results from the baked product. In a word, 'meh.' These cookies were ok, certainly better than many I've had, but not even close to the best I've made. They were a bit flat tasting, and lacked that inherent chocolate chip cookie goodness.

Here's my diagnosis:
Corn Syrup - Helped achieve some of the thickness that I wanted, but detracted from the flavor in it's flatness. left the cookie with bit of a gummy-ness rather than the chewiness I was looking for.
Shortening - Again, helped with the thickness, but left the flavor  flat. The cookies did not have that richness you get from butter. Not a surprise.
Sugar & Salt on top - Got mixed reviews. I liked the salt, but my fellow samplers could have done without it. The sugar wasn't a highlight or a lowlight.



I think the key is to use my fat (butter) and flour / sugar proportions to get the thickness and gooey-ness that I'm looking for. A good reminder that the more real and closer to the source the ingredient is (e.g. butter vs. shortening, sugar vs. syrup) the better the outcome!

I'm going back to my standard recipe for my next try and will follow up soon with those results.