TWD: Honey-Wheat Cookies

(This is again a blog I pre-wrote - still on the road. Today I have to go home, buhu...)

Michelle of Flourchild decided on Honey-Wheat Cookies for this week's TWD (find the recipe in the book on page 81, or on her page).

To make it short - I had no idea where to get wheat germ or what exactly this should even be. I decided to use spelt instead. So I have no idea what the cookies should actually be like. I just can say that mine turned out fabulous!

(rolled Honey-Wheat/Spelt cookies and flattened balls)




I halved the recipe and everything went so perfectly - this was really my most untroubled TWD-recipe ever! I made the batter the day before and chilled it over night. No measuring problems, no dark brown (a.k.a. black and burned) bottom (I started to use two baking sheets, that seems to help). I even got exactly the amount of cookies the recipe stated (18 cookies for half the batter). Wonderful! This is, I guess, what it should always be like when your baking abilities are better than mine!

Maybe I would be a little more reluctant with the lemon zest next time, but that's really only a very, very small fly in the ointment...

TWD: My Best Cocolate Chip Cookies

(This is a post out of the can - sorry but I am away, right now I am enjoying NYC - woha!)

Cookies and chocolate and sweets than can easily be transported to the office are definitely the topic of the month at TWD. Great!
I didn't make cookies in a while, so I was excited to go for these, Dorie's "Best Chocolate Chip Cookies". Chocolate cookies are definitely one of my favourites. To spoil it: The name of the cookies is no exaggeration. The recipe is really great!

I used a mix of different chocolates. As I halved th recipe, in sum I needed 168 g, and  I used about 40g of 86% chocolate, 50g of 50%, 30g of 75% and 50g of Mitzi Blue Nutmix. (an Austrain chocolate I can only highly recommend. It is from an enterprise that started with bars of excellent chocolate, filled with very exotic fillings like Celeriac, Truffle and Port Wine, or Lemon Polenta; but they also have traditional tastes, drink chocolates and lots more. Everything is biological, and most chocolate is Fair Trade. Their latest product are round, very flat chocolates called Mitzi Blue. One sort is with 27% cocoa and a very finely chopped nut mix, so I thought they would perfectly match for these cookies.)

I opted for the cocoa-batter, because I like my cookies dark.

Unfortunately I made some measuring failures. Again. And this time I can't blaim the lack of cup-measures, but only my clumsiness and improvidence.
What happened? I made half the recipe, because 45 cookies sounds like a whole lot of cookies, and I made the wheat-honey cookies for next week, too. So 45 chocolate cookies where way too much.

Everything went fine first. Until I did remember that I wanted to include the cocoa. So, what now. The batter was already finished.
In my thoughtlessness I just included the whole amount of cocoa the recipe called for. Good idea, isn't it?

Yeah. But now I had too many dry ingredients (abaout 50g or 1/2 cup too much flour). I wasn't sure if the cookies would work out like that. So I decided to change my mind and just make the whole recipe, and not only the half amount.

Yes. Good idea. But how to beat butter fluffy, when there is already a ready-made batter in the bowl?
Well, don't ask how I did it. I made a big mess in the kitchen, I absolutely scamped araound and made a big botch, but in the end I had a (very humid) cookie batter ready to bake.
But when the first rack was in the oven I discovered that I doubled everything - despite the chocolate...
So I made chocolate chip cookies with not as much chocolate chips as there should have been. Or, to name it differently, I just strayed off the intented topic and missed the point.

(Chocolate chip cookies with not as much chocolate chips as there should be, waiting on the cooling rack to cool) 


I have no idea how and why, but in the end the cookies turned nevertheless out very, very good! I am absolutely in love with these chocolate cookies and have to redo them, and redo, and do again, and try another playing around option (and include enough chocolate chips next time :o]).

 

(not picture-perfect looking, but perfectly tasting chocolate cookies)

Thanks to Kait of Kait’s Plate who has chosen them! You can find the recipe on her page or in the book (p.68).

TWD: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

The first Brownies I ever ate, that must have been back in about 2003. Not too long ago, hu? That's mostly because Brownies were more or less unknown before Starbucks invaded mainland Europe. Since, I am a big brownie fan. I love them moisty and with lots and lots of chocolate (what is a somewhat redundant, because Brownie and lots and lots of chocolate are basically the same...)

Except for the Brownie cake I made for my birthday recently, I never made Brownies myself (as I never made chocolate bars, creamy cakes, tartes etc. before I joined TWD, so it is not really something extraordinaire that homemade Brownies are new to me).

Because I take everything I bake to work (no husband, no kids, no dog), I always appreciate recipes that can be transported easily, as the one Tanya of Chocolatechic picked for this week. This month, I am especially lucky in this regard! You may find the recipe at her page or in the book.

One of my colleagues is gluten- and lactose-intolerant and I don't do the extra work often, but sometimes I try to bake things she can also enjoy (with less success, I have to admit). This week was one of these weeks. I chose to make a second Brownie recipe, and opted for the "Tribute to Katherine Hepburn" Brownies. I just love Katherine Hepburn. I do.

But let's first speak about the duty, before the pleasure.

Rick Katz Brownies for Julia turned out to be a bit of work, at least compared to what I expect of Brownies (what is a batter mixed together in 5 min. without any difficulties). It was not that tricky, but nevertheless you need at least three different pans/bowls, and some more time as you have to whip part of the egg-sugar-mix.

For the chocolate I again mixed different sorts. The recipe calls for 4 ounces (112 g) unsweetened chocolate. Originally, I intended to half the recipe, so I had only about 2,5 ounces (70g) at hand. In sum, I needed 6 ounces (168g) of chocolate so I decided to just take more of the other chocolate. I had 2,5 (70g) of excellent Dolfin chocolate (70% with little cocoa bean pieces - great!) and replenished for the rest with ordinary 70% chocolate.

( If you have never seen Dolfin chocolate, enjoy these pictures! The tablets are packed in enveloppes, and when you open it, it looks like a pack of tobacco...)

For the rest I did as the recipe said. As always, I used spelt flour and cane sugar.

It worked out quite good for me. I sprinkled a small band with shredded almonds, and another one with non-pareilles, just to test it.

The part with the pearls did not turn out to be a great idea. Nothing bad happened, but they lost their colour and it is just not necessary. But the almonds look pretty fine.



Like with many others, the inner parts stayed very, very humid (or "gooey" - a new word I learned. Generally, TWD is a language crash course for me. Gooey, fudgy, cake-like is what I learned this week :o]). As I said in the beginning, I am a big fan of humid Brownies. But it was not really possible to cut them, and I guess that's too much humidity.

I decided to frost them and had the great idea to make a white-chocolate-iceing also for the Hepburn-Brownies, so I had to use the lactose free butter and the no-lactose-no-gluten chocolate.
Not such a good idea. I don't know what went wrong, but I made it again afterwards with ordinary butter and chocolate, and the second time it worked out, so I guess for this one time it was not my fault. Maybe lactose is necessary for the iceing. Anyways. My lactose-and-gluten-free attempt turned out as an ugly butter-soup with ropy chocolate algae. Really ugly. I spare you with the pics. But the second iceing, with ordinary dark chocolate, was fine, and I used it for a part of the Katz-Brownies. Now I have a band sprinkled with shredded almonds, a strip glazed with dark chococlate iceing (some pieces having non-pareilles under the iceing what gives them a crunchy cover that I enjoy!), and some pieces pure and simple.
Finally, I put the Rick Katz Brownies in the fridge (because I read that could improve the almost-liquid-problem. And it did).

Brownies can't be wrong for me, so I definitely appreciated them. Thanks to Tanya for choosing them!




Oh, and here the result for the Hepburn-Brownies: They were a flop. Big problems. Again, it could be that the no-glute-no-lactose topic eventually plays a role in here. I hope so, because otherwise it would be all my fault...

The batter was easy. I just added a bit less coffee powder, no cinnamon and almonds for the nuts.
The test piece (see left) turned out as a  brick. Really. A round, black, brittle-not-in-a-good-way brick.

The "real" piece looked the same, but I found out that the inner parts are ok. I just had to cut off the edges (well, if you call 2 cm still an "edge"). They are more cake-like than anything else. I finally did pass them over to my colleague, but they are really not my best piece of work.

I got a cup measure for birthday!! Yeah!!!

It's not one of these fancy multiple-spoon-matryoshka-eske tools, but an ordinary measuring cup. But it's all I need, and it even measures liquid ounces! Maybe, when I will be in Washington/NY the coming weeks I will look for a spoon-measure for table- and tea-spoons, but this is not implicitly necessary.

I am so much looking forward to next week-end when I will bake with my all new cup measure for the first time! Things will become so easy!! (but when somethings going wrong, now I will have one excuse less...)

TWD: Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

Milk Chocolate. Well. Ok. If it really has to be...
Milk chocolate is not really my favourite chocolate. But I was ready to give it a try.

The mini chocolate bundts look like an Austrian dessert (I already mentioned it and the debate about the name, that leaves a bad taste, here), and one many people do not like a lot. (Don't ask me why. Mini-chocolate cakes with a bit of hazelnuts in the dough, covered by a dark-chocolate glazé, served warm with whipped cream - personally I don't see anything wrong in here. Nevertheless, I can't remember having ever eaten it ...) 
But still - I am always ready to try something out!

What made me a little bit more interested in the mini-bundts was the "Playing around" section. Normally, I don't got for it becasuse I am such a newby in baking, I can be happy when I manage the recipes just as they are, without any fancy playing around. But first, there was an option to use buttermilk, and I had some leftovers from the Cocoa-nana-bread. And secondly, there was this little sentence, stating that we could use other nuts and/or dried fruits for the nut-swirl. Dried fruits.
 And suddenly I had a vision. I love figs. And I think that figs and chocolate do match perfectly. And - I even think that figs and milk chocolate matches even better.
Converted to grams I had to use 169g chopped nuts. I used chopped cashews, maybe my favourite nuts, and three dried figs (chopped very finely). I left out just as much nuts that the whole volume stayed the same. Sorry, but re-calculating into cups just overstrains my mathematical abilities.
(left: chopped cashews with figs and cocoa for the swirl)

As many other TWD-bakers I don't have mini-bundt pans, so I used my silicone form for 6 brioche, which I also often use for muffins.
It turned out, that I had batter for 12 mini-cakes! Maybe original mini-bundt pans are just bigger than my brioche baking dish.
I tried to leave out a hole in the middle by rolling some parchment paper and putting it in the middle of the form. I know that the sense of the hole in the bundt-pan is to let the air circulate, and that a rolled piece of parchment paper doesn't serve this purpose. It was more to try if I can get out the form of a bundt cake.

Well, yes, it works. But not very well, and I guess it is not necessary. The mini-"bundts" are alright, even without a hole in the middle.

When I was preparing and baking this, I already had the feeling that milk-chocolate, figs and nuts could turn out to become an all-time favourite. (So much for my hesitations at the beginning about milk chocolate... it is always worthwhile to give things a try!!)

And what can I say? It definitely did. This was more than perfect. The figs are not too dominant, but there is a slight note. The cocoa-nut-fig swirl is just wonderful. The milk-chocolate works pretty fine in this mix. The mini-cakes are just the size to be less than a whole slice of cake, but more than a "beside the coffee-cup" sweet. Per-fect.

Can I take a bath in this?

TWD: Coco-nana bread

This week's TWD pick, the Cocoa-nana bread, came from Steph of Obsessed with baking.
I was pretty excited when I saw her choice, because banana-bread seems to be kind of a "soul-food" in the States, in the sense, that in almost every second TV-series or book, it is used when someone needs a treat to overcome a love-dissapointment, any "the world is mean"-moment, or just to feel comfortable. Characters refer to it is giving them some reminders on parental warmth and childhood memories of a world where everything is perfect, because your world is small and you don't even know that "imperfect" is an option for life...
I never ate, saw, or made it, so I was happy to have an opportunity to try something I have heard a lot of, but wouldn't ever have made without TWD!

Already last week, I was tempted to head to the supermarket in the last minute. Well, more in the last minute -10, as I was already mixing the ingredienst when I recognized that I had no salted peanuts at home.
I am a lazy person, so I took the peanuts I had at home, and roasted them in a pan, and when they were all greasy, I rolled them in salt. And I did add a bit additional salt to the mixture. I didn't miss anything, so I guess it was ok like that.

This week, when I was already ready to go and mix the ingredients, I found out that I have (a) no eggs at home, (b) no buttermilk at home. So, the already fluffy creamy butter had to wait, because these ingredients I really can't substitute - this time I really had to rush to the supermarket at the corner.

My laziness reading the recipe thoroughly is combined with another problem - again my problem with converting the measures... When it was time to put in the cocoa powder, I found out that I had almost only half as much as needed. As I just came back from the store I really wasn't in the mood to go there again. (I have to mention that I am living on the fourth floor of an "Altbau", which means in american counting, the fifth floor. And "Altbau" means an old building with very high ceilings. And no, there is no elevator. What means 105 steps. You understand I had no interest in leaving the house again? So I tried to use more chocolate and cut some of it very very finely. (Now I know, it wasn't enough to offset for the missing cocoa. I should have used more chocolate. And chocolate chips, which I didn't have neither as they are not so commonly available at our stores. Next time I will have to cut bigger chunks.)

(This may give you a little impression of what I have to climb) 

But the real problem was the following: When I converted the amount of buttermilk, I really, really miscalculated. I used 0,25l. Well, when I poured it in, I was already wondering a little bit if this can be right. But I was so sure... I have to tell that, additionally to converting cups into liters, I halved the recipe. So, maybe that added some more confusion.

Big. Problem.
Really big.

My oven usually needs less time than announced in the recipe. So you can imagine my confusion, when the bread didn't get firm in the middle.

The usual, little "master-piece" to taste (the round "cake" you see left and right) was no problem - maybe because I used only a small amount of dough and it was low enough to thicken.

But the "real" bread didn't. Not after 40 min after covering it with foil. Not after 50 mins. Not after an hour. Then I removed the foil, gave it another 10 mins., and finally took it out, because it started to get very dark on the outside.

That was the moment when I started recalculating the amount of buttermilk. What would have been necessary was... 0.09l. Instead my 0.25l. It's like I used 1 cup. Instead of 3/8 cup. Argh!

So, no wonder it didn't work out as announced in the recipe!

Nevertheless - what I got (whatever you may call it...) might not be a cocoa-nana bread, but a cocoa-nana-whatever, with a good taste, just a slight touch of banana flavour, and a very humid center. I like humid centers. It looks like a bar of humid-in-the-middle brownie or muffin, but is not as sweet, and with red jam on it it was pretty good.

I can live with that. :o]

TWD February Preview

Yeah, the February picks are published! And, tamtamtamtam: here they are:

Milk Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes, Rick Katz’s Brownies for Julia, My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies and Honey-Wheat Cookies.

I will have to do the mini bundts already tomorrow, as I have some buttermilk left from the Cocoa-nana Bread, which won't be useabel forever. They look like an Austrian dessert, the "Mohr im Hemd" (see picture right). It has no swirl but also nuts in the dough, and is served warm. From time to time there is a debate about the political correctness of the name, which I can support, as it would be very very easy to name it differently. (like, "Chocolate Bundt cake"...)

Brownies are adorable. They are relatively new to me, as I cannot remember having seen them before Starbucks invaded (german-speaking) Europe. Which must have been in about 2003 or so. Boy, I really hated Starbucks back in those days... (like, I guess 95% of Austrian, as it is completely against our loooong coffee-house tradition).  Some things never change. And some change by 180°... But Brownies found their way into my heart immediately. I never made any, so I am really looking forward to it!

And we have two kind of Cookies on the list. Cookies are cookies, who could say anything against them? Honey-Wheat sounds very delicious. And I haven't made cookies for a while. And they are mostly easy to make, easy to store, and easy to transport to the office. So - cookies, yay!

Up to now I have been a very regular TWD baker, baking all picks in every week. The upcoming weeks will be different...
I will leave at February 11 and be back on 24th. And when I am back, there will be Lenten season, which is nothing religious or spiritual for me, as I am neither - but still I like to restrain from some things that became kind of "everyday-luxuries" and are not really essential or necessary for life.
I will find a way to deal with these two problems later...

Decisions, choices, options - revisited

Done.
I made a decision.
Yeah, really, I am serious, no joke!

And I did not have to flip my "yes-no"-coin. I decided myself. All alone. Like a grown-up girl. Be proud of me...

First I eliminated the tarte, as the text says it is not good to store it. I don't think I will habe time Tuesday or Wednesday to make it. I will have to do it tomorrow. So, no tarte for this week.
Then I thought it's the grandmothers cake, because there is such a long and nice storie with it. But honestly, this is not ment to be made for birthdays.

The last days I was convinced that it should be the apple-cheesecake. But today I granted myself half of a Cadbury's bar I found at home (no idea how I could have forgotten about...). Cadbury's, Hersheyetc.  and all that are not common in my country. Some can be bought at very expansive luxury-supermarkets in the inner-city. But most can only be found at special stores serving the american/english community in Vienny. That's to say, at the only of such stores we have... (despite you work for the UN, as at the UN headquarter there is a shop where you can get like anything from everywhere in the world. But I don't, so I never so this shop and know it only by mythical stories by former class mates, as my school was not too far away from the UN, and we had many "UN-children"m or by some friends who happened to work there for some time). I had my first Reeses peanutbutter-cup about three weeks ago. Imagine that.

Well, I am deviating from what I wanted to say.
I opened this Cadbury's bar, a "Star Bar", made of a lot of peanut butter with little pieces of peanuts in the center, enrobed with caramel, and finished by milk chocolate. Despite the fact that I usually do not like milk chocolate too much, this was a perfect match. Really.

And at this point I knew, even if I am afraid of making a brownie cake, because I never made brownies before and don't know if I can handle it, I will have to got for it. Chocolate, caramel, peanuts. That's all I need.

(pictures are taken from Chocablog)

Decisions, choices, options; or: watching me think

So, soon there will be my birthday. My 27th.
This will be easy, because I am celebrating my 27th birthday for several years now, so I have sort of  routine.
:o]

I would like to bake something for this day, and as it is my day, and my recipe-selection for TWD might never come (too many bakers, not enough recipes. ha, that's almost a hiphip-quote!), I will decide what to do for my birthday. It should be something I like myself (of course...), something not too ordinary,  but also not too complex - I want it to be good, delishous, eadible at least.
It has to be possible to store it at least over night, and it should be not too difficult to bring to the office. So, ice-cream is off.

Too easy would be cookies, or muffins or scones, which I all adore, but not for this occasion. Too complex would be Pecan Honey Stick Buns and anything else that contains yeasted and time-consuming dough, and also anything that must be served the moment it's finished.

I like tartes, I like brownies, sometimes I like some cheesecakes. I love peanuts and cashews. Caramel is not too bad, either, and I like chocolate, especially dark one.When it comes to fruits, I like apples, pears, and I adore figs. I don't like bundt cakes, heavy creamy cakes, and peaches. I'm not fond of coffee, walnuts, hazelnuts in my sweets. Berries are also not my favourite. Whipped cream is a no-no.

So I headed to the only cookbooks I am able to use, and had a look how to combine my favourite ingredients. (Everything I ever made from Nigella didn't turn out fine. This is for sure my fault, but I stopped trying her recipes. Maybe we do just not match. And the other cookbooks I own are some of the "Basic"-series, which are great, but I do not consider appropriate for this cause, asian cookbooks, which do not propose too many desserts, cookie books, and cobbler or ice-cream books - cookies are too simple, cobblers and ice-cream too difficult to bring to the office.)

I lowered the number of possible recipes to 11 from Dorie Greenspan's own book and three from Dorie's book with Pierre Hermé.

The options are (update: and what is left after some serious consideration...):
From Pierre Hermé's Chocolate Dessert book:
Faubourg Pavé (I would like to say, it's too much chocolate. But when I am honest to myself, I am just too cowardly for it)
Macarons (too close to the "cookie-no"; anyways, will have to find an occasion to try this. Maybe my mothers birthday coming up in February.)

Chocolate and part-steeped fig tarte

From Dorie's "Baking: From my home to yours":
Peanuttiest Blondies
Rugelachs (see "Macarons")
Fig Cake
Brown-Sugar Apple Cheescake
Caramel Peanut Brownie Cake
Peanut Butter Torte (Peanuts are great, peanutbutter is incredible. But a cake more or less only made of peanutbutter is maybe too much peanutbutter. Even for me. If this is possible...)
Normandy Apple Tarte (No special reason. Just got the feeling that there are plenty of other occasions where this one will be useful. I will find another easily.)
Russian Grandmother Apple-Pie cake
Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart
Honey Almond Fig Tart
Raspberry Blanc-Manger (In fact, I have no idea what a blanc-manger should be. Iit sounds like sort of a cheese cake. Anyways, I like to find it out, but not this time. It's not raspberry season anyways, and usually I prefer using what can be bought at the market at the moment - or what I have in my bio-basket...)

So, what to do, what to do?
As a next step, I decided to play it save and limit the options to what was already on the TWD recipe rotation. Some hints, pictures and P&Q couldn't harm my low baking skills.
So, here is what is left:

Russian Grandmother Apple-Pie cake (this looks so melow, lush and sweet and the same time)
Brown-Sugar Apple Cheescake (because it really challenges me to combine one of my favourite fruits with cheesecake, and I have never thought of combining these two flavours before; additinally, cheeseckaes are not too sophisticated to create)

Caramel Peanut Brownie Cake (Brownies with a lot of chocolate! Peanuts! Caramel! This one combines everything I like...)

Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart (ever since I saw the picture I thought and still think everytime I flip to this page: Must. Make. Soon)

(The Pierre Hermé tarte is off. I am too timid...)

But: Is the grandmother-pie not too odd? Is a cheesecake appropriate for birthday? For my birthday? Do apples really go with cheesecake? I never made brownies, so maybe the brownie cake won't turn out fine - and I want to have a perfect birthday-whatever! And a tarte? For birthday? And Maybe the caramel gets too hard when I store it overnight?

I guess I have to give it a rest. And decide tomorrow. Or Friday. Or Saturday. Or...

(yes, I do have problems with decision taking :o])

TWD: Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars

For this week, Lillian of Confectiona’s Realm picked Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars. I highly welcomed this choice as I have no idea of bars. Bars are something bought at the supermarket when you have to wait too long in line at the cass. But doin it yourself? Sounds almost as crazy as doin Marshmallows yourself...

But I really do enjoy trying new things. (And there are a lot of new things to be tried out for me as a complete baker novice...)

The bar is made of three layers: two oat-layers on the bottom and on the top, and a chocolate-raisin layer in the middle. Preparing the two different "doughs" was not too difficult. I used spelt instead of oat, merely because I have spelt at home and don't want to have too many cereals at home. I don't need them very often, so they would just stand in the cupboard, and in the worst case attract moths.
I guess it didn't make a big difference. At least it was easy to work with it and I like the taste of spelt.
For the chocolate, I used 50g of 99% Lindt chocolate and ordinary milk chocolate for the rest, as I didn't find semi-sweet chocolate drops. In the end I guess I got something like about 75% chocolate, and I got to say I like this mixture very much. For the rest, I did as the recipe says. (despite that I halved it)

As always I have this cup-problem, as cup measures do not exist here. (maybe I get an imported cup measure for birthday....) So I had no idea how much of the oat/spelt-layer I should put aside. 
I took about 1/3 and it turned out that this was not enough. I had problems covering the chocolate layer, so when I had spread all the remaining spelt-paste in little crumbs over the chocolate-layer, I scattered some more spelt over it, so the chocolate was at least covered slightly everywhere.
My short-fall of the top-layer was compensated by too much chocolate sauce.

I don't know how it happened, but my chocolate layer turned out to be much too much. 

So, what I got is a strange kind of a chocolate bar, that is way too high for a "bar". Anyways, it tasted absolutely delicious!

Recently, the TWD recipes didn't overwhelm me too much. They were ok, but this one I will definitely re-make, not at least because they are so easy to bring to the office and just a perfect treat for the coffee-break!!