Oreo Cake

Two weekends ago we had friends over for dinner, a dinner which I actually made everything myself. This hasn't happened very much since George came along. Earlier in the week I had hoped we'd get to be outside for dinner on the patio, however the weather had other plans. It was usually cool and rainy, not your typical Memphis spring weather, well at least the cool part. The friends came and played with George, who was pretty well-behaved. I made a chicken dish that had a lot of cheese in it (recipe here). However, you know that dessert is my favorite thing to make and so for dessert I made a very delicious cake with an ungodly amount of Oreo cookies in it. It's a single layer chocolate cake, split into two layers after baking (no Oreos in the batter) with 'frosting' made entirely of heavy cream and crushed Oreos. For real. It was crazy good. I know Oreos are processed junk food and all but the remind me of being a kid and taking just the right amount of time to dunk one in milk before it broke off into mush. Oreo Cake recipe via Serious Eats.

Baking with a newborn

Or alternately 'Baking with a newborn while breastfeeding'. George will be one month old tomorrow (!) and I'm slowly getting into something of a routine. Here's a gratuitous baby picture.

I'm on maternity leave and the first couple of weeks were a blur but it's getting easier. Most of my time is still spent feeding him or trying to catch a nap but I've found a few spare minutes to bake and even cook dinner.

The other day I was craving something sweet and while the little napped I thawed a sheet of puff pastry, brushed it with egg wash, and baked it for about 20 minutes. Once it was out of the oven I spread the top with Nutella and then topped that with fresh raspberries. It was not fancy but it took very little time to make and it satisfied my sweet tooth. Hopefully in the next few weeks I can progress to something a little bit more challenging.

Baking with Julia: Blueberry Nectarine Pie

I've totally been slacking off on Baking with Julia, but I did manage to bake one recipe this month. The last recipe for the month is this Blueberry Nectarine Pie. I'm so glad I made it because it was so incredibly good and a great use for all the fresh fruit available right now.

First of all the pie dough is the best I've made in terms of ease of making, flakiness, and taste. In the book there are several ways listed to make the dough; in a food processor, by hand, or by stand mixer. My food processor is too small so usually I make pie dough by hand, which is a pain. However, since this dough gave stand mixer directions I decided to try it and it was so much easier. The dough recipe uses both butter and shortening which I think is the best of both worlds, you get the taste from the butter and the flakiness from the shortening. Plus this recipe made two (double crusted) pies worth of dough so I had enough to freeze for a second pie. 

The filling was (obviously) blueberry and nectarine. You took half the fruit and cooked it with sugar, lemon zest, and flour and then added it to the remaining uncooked fruit. I really liked this method, there were still crisp pieces of nectarine in the filling which I thought was a nice touch.I do think in the future I would have added some breadcrumbs (a la Dorie Greenspan) to the bottom of the crust before adding the filling to soak up some of the juice but other than that I really loved this recipe.

Go visit the hosts for this recipe! 

Manchego's Kitchen

That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Summer bundt

It's hot. Obviously, since it's July in Memphis. It will be hot until October. Or possibly later judging from the recent NOAA report. I'm doing my best to stay indoors. One of the few perks of summer is the widespread availability of produce. Berries, squash, tomatoes, etc. Oh and watermelon, I have been eating the heck out of watermelon lately. I've been pinning a lot of summer-inspired recipes, there's a recipe for peach-ginger handpies I hope to make this weekend. Last weekend I made the Triple Berry Summer Buttermilk Bundt Cake that Deb at Smitten Kitchen posted a few weeks ago, the recipe is adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts (which I own and has lots of great recipes, including a delicious jam cake).

It's a berry-filled bundt cake with lemon zest and a sweet, thick lemon glaze. It's completely worth turning your oven on for. I sent half home with my nephew and I think he, his brother, and his parents liked it. Doug and I liked it a lot too, we managed to polish it off within a few days with nary a crumb left.

Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins

After finally getting our kitchen back in working order I got back to baking. I missed it so much, you don't realize how much you much using your whisks and cake pans. One of the first things I baked were these muffins from the Joy the Baker cookbook. I can't say enough good things about this book, it's been out for awhile now but I still love thumbing through it and picking out something to make.

 Besides the blueberries, the browned butter is the other major flavor going on. Browned butter makes almost anything better. The first time I made it I burned it, it was blackened butter - not as good. However, when you don't burn it it's awesome and makes everything taste better.

They're super easy to make and especially right now when blueberries are in season (you can use frozen too).

Baking with Julia: French Strawberry Cake

This is the part where normally I would show you a photo of a cake, a French Strawberry Cake. Unfortunately, to see that you'll have to go to the blogs of the other bakers in BWJ. Apparently I am just not able to make a genoise cake without screwing it up. I had a similar problem with the batter when we made the Berry Surprise Cake from the Dorie "Baking" book. Somewhere between adding the flour and the butter I made a grievous mistake and deflated the batter. It all seemed fine until it came out of the oven and was about 1/2" inch thick.

Ugh. There was no way it was going to be sliced into three layers. I let and cool and tasted a piece just for posterity's sake and it was just awful. Hard and rubbery. A total waste of eggs, butter, sugar, and flour. Did I mention I was making this for dessert later that night? Instead I tossed the genoise fail, utilized the strawberries, made sweet cream biscuits for shortcakes, and used the heavy cream to make whipped cream. I think my cooking mojo was totally off on Saturday period because I was not happy with the shortcakes either. Dinner was not my best work. I owe my friends who came over a do-over with a better menu. 

Anyway, to go see what this cake should have looked like visit Sophia's Sweets or Think, Love, Sleep, Dine - they hosted this week's recipe and have very nice cakes to see!

Baked Donuts

I really love donuts. A lot. In Memphis the main two places we go are Gibson's and Howard's. Gibson's is packed all the time and a little further away from our house but they have a little more variety than Howard's. Howard's is super close to our house and busy but manageable. Donuts are obviously not healthy but they're so good. I wanted to make donuts for awhile but really didn't want to invest in a deep fryer. Then I saw the donut pans for making baked donuts and thought I'd get one but never did. 

A trip to Target a few weeks ago found me wandering down the bake ware aisles and I found a donut pan, so I impulsively bought it. It took another week or so before I actually made donuts one Sunday morning for breakfast.

I used a pretty basic recipe which I now cannot find, but I know it had buttermilk in it and a chocolate glaze. It was quick and easy, the only slightly messy part was dipping the donuts in the glaze. While these donuts aren't as good as the ones we get from Gibson's or Howard's they were still very good for a baked/first-try donut.

S'mores Brownies & a new cookbook

I love new cookbooks, I mean not all cookbooks but most of them. I especially love the ones with lots of sweets in them. The new cookbook from Joy the Baker fit that bill perfectly. It's a pretty book to look at and the recipes inside are clever and imaginative and so delicious looking. I can't wait to make everything in it. 

For the inaugural recipe, I picked S'mores Brownies and I am so glad I did. It's something akin to your basic cake-y brownie recipe with crushed graham crackers in the batter and topped with giant marshmallows. I did slice my marshmallows in two to make them fit better and mine were a little darker than the photo in the book but they were so good. This was one of Doug's favorite new recipes, he a lot of them. Do yourself a favor and invest in this book, there are recipes for Strawberry Cookie Dough Ice Cream, a Peanut Butter & Jelly Shake, Avocado Fries, Peanut Butter & Bacon Cookies and so many other treats.

Baking with Julia: Chocolate Truffle Tart(lets)

I almost didn't bake this one because it felt like it would take a hundred steps (I'm being dramatic) but a) it didn't take that long and b) I'm so glad I made it because it was delicious. 

This recipe is hosted by:

spike.does.stuff

Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats

cookbookhabit

a whisk and a spoon

I just hate making pie and tart dough because I don't have a food processor and I have to do it all by hand. I pressed on though and made the chocolate tart dough. You know something is going to be good when even the dough smells good.

The dough was put together and rested while I did other things. After a 30 minute chill period, I rolled out the dough and lined the tart pan (I made one big tart instead of smaller tarts). There was another chill period for the lined tart pan and then it got to go into the oven.

The filling was actually simple to make, it was kind of like making ganache. There are 8 egg yolks in the filling, which is a lot, but it didn't taste 'eggy' the way some things with lots of eggs do. My only misstep was I forgot biscotti at the store and did not feel like going back out for it. Instead I roughly chopped up a few leftover cookies I had made earlier in the week. I might have baked it a couple of minutes longer than called for just because undercooked yolks in the filling concerned me a little.

The final product was so very good, the texture of the filling is hard to describe appropriately, it's like an airier, pudding but with a crackly, brownie-like top. Definitely worth making the tart dough.

February Birthday Cakes

We have a lot of February birthdays, my mom, a dear friend of mine, my brother, Doug's mom, my aunt, etc. Two weeks ago my knitting group had a birthday gathering for one of our own (aforementioned dear friend). For that event I made this Double Chocolate Layer Cake from Smitten Kitchen. I did raspberry filling, but not the one the recipe called for, I did cheater raspberry filling with Bonne Maman raspberry jam. I loved this cake and it got good reviews. Unfortunately I don't have a of it, but it was a really nice, moist cake.

Over the weekend we hosted my mom, her boyfriend, my brother, sister-in-law, niece and nephew for Saturday night dinner. I made chicken stew and buttermilk biscuits (chicken stew from here, biscuits from Dorie), my brother's favorite goat cheese tart (recipe here), and this Double Chocolate Sour Cream Cake from The Kitchn.

 This was another cake winner, I loved the sour cream addition in the frosting and the cake, it was so good and moist. My decorating skills are not very good but I managed to spell out 'Happy Birthday'.

So there you go, if you're in need of a birthday cake recipe these two recipes are great.

Baking with Julia: White Loaves

It's the first week of Baking with Julia! I'm happy to be back in the groove of semi-weekly baking (BWJ will bake twice a month). I'm also excited to try new techniques and bake things I've never baked before. This week was White Loaves and it was hosted by Laurie and Jules. 

I've made yeasted bread before but I can't recall rolling it out, I think the last recipe I did with yeasted bread was more a 'throw it in the pan' kind of thing. Anyway, I started making this in the early afternoon so I could use the end results for dinner. The beginning was yeast + warm water + sugar and you waited until the mixture got foamy. Then you started adding the seven and a half (yes, seven) cups of flour. My Kitchen-Aid hadn't gotten that much usage in long time. It made some scary noises but hung in there and gave me a beautiful ball of dough. The hardest part, for me at least, was getting the butter all incorporated, I had to do a little manual work for that. I sat the bowl of dough on top of a warm oven for the first rise and it worked really well. When it came time to roll out the dough for the pan, mine was not so professional looking, it was a little lumpy. The second rise was just as good as the first but afterwards I realized that one loaf pan had more dough than the other.

After 35 minutes in the oven, the loaves came out golden brown and very nice looking. The larger loaf was less photogenic than the smaller one but they both tasted great. I used the bread to make BST (bacon, spinach, tomato) sandwiches for dinner. Doug loooved the bread and I was super happy with the results too. 

Whoopie!

I think by this point the whole whoopie pie craze has gone the way of the dinosaurs, but I'm just now getting around to making some. Actually, that isn't true, I made some last fall but didn't blog about them. Last week I promised Doug and his nerd buddies a baked good if they decided they were hanging out by Wednesday night (when said baking would occur). The dudes complied and I thought I'd try the whoopie pies again. I used this recipe from Epicuious, which is pretty basic, chocolate with marshmallow filling. My failing was that I didn't realize how much time they would take to make (more than I had allotted for a Wednesday night) and they were super messy, especially the filling. Because I am lazy, I made them bigger than they should have been, they were kind of gigantic. In fact, once they reached their intended destination on Thursday night the guys wished for smaller treats next time, I concur. Whoopie pies are tasty but should be made the size  indicated on the recipe and probably should only be made when you have several hours to kill. Like on a Saturday afternoon.

TWD Revisited: Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake

So TWD is over, we baked it all. Well I was pretty lax about participating the two months (but for good reason). But the good news is we're still going to be baking TWD will start baking our way through Baking with Julia beginning February 7th. In the meantime I'm still baking, although I've had some issues that normally I would not have but for some reason my baking attention span has been lessened causing some kitchen misshaps. First was when I made the Low and Lush Chocolate Cheesecake (page 243 of the Dorie book). I made an ENTIRE CHEESECAKE and left out the sugar. Oh the humanity. Next I made the Peanuttiest Blondies (page 119 ) and managed to underbake them so the outside was perfect looking but the inside was gooey and not totally baked. Sigh. 

Finally, I did manage to bake the Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake (page 286) without screwing it up. For some reason I thought I missed baking it when it was originally made during TWD, but then I looked in my archives and I did bake it in June 2010. Anyway, it was still very good. This time I used an actual loaf pan and raspberry jam instead of cherry.

I look forward to baking through the new book, I think it's going to be a little challenging, there are a lot more recipes with more techniques I'm not familiar with, but it should be a fun learning opportunity.

Orange you glad it's January

January is a fresh start, a clean slate, a new page in the notebook; there are so many possibilities for this year. I bought our new wall calender in October, it's from Rifle Paper Co. and I love all the illustrations in it. Since January's illustration was citrus, it inspired me to bake something with citrus. Plus I've been snacking on clementines like crazy lately. 

I thought cupcakes might be fun and I found this recipe for Orange Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting. I used some cheery-looking liners I bought at Joanne's a while back. I really liked the cupcakes, they were appropriately orange enough and the cream cheese frosting was delicious.

Cookies & pie for fall

I made these Fall-ish cookies a few weeks ago to help me get in the 'spirit'. First up was Pumpkin Gingersnaps from Two Peas and Their Pod. Doug loves gingersnaps and I love pumpkin so I hoped we'd both like these. I made them mainly for Doug's game night on Thursday but kept some for us too. They seemed to be a success, I liked how cakey they were but I might have kicked up the spice a tiny bit.

Second, was Iced Oatmeal-Applesauce cookies, which I do not have a picture of. Sorrys! This recipe was from the Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: the New Classics but I found it online here. As silly as this sounds, I don't pick up this cookbook too often because there are almost no pictures. I know, I'm ridiculous. Anyway, I felt like it was rather neglected so I scanned through the pages, found the recipe and found that I had all the ingredients for them. I did make mine bigger than the recipe called for but I really love the flavor of these.

Now the pie is a magnificent creation, found at Ezra Pound Cake. I made it for Sunday night dinner dessert and it was a little involved, but completely and utterly worth the effort. Graham cracker crust with a layer of caramel and pecans, a layer apple slices cooked with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, cream cheese layer and topped with homemade whipped cream and more caramel and pecans. It was too dark to take a photo that night so these are from the next day so it's a little less impressive but it still tasted very, very good, even the next day.