A Whisk at Hand

Romanesco--Strange but Beautiful!

2009-12-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

We got this interesting veggie in our CSA box a little while ago. I wasn't quite sure how to use it. I ended up cutting it into small spears, blanching it and then tossed it with some sauteed onion/garlic/salt/pepper/chilli flakes and olive oil and served it over pasta with some Parm. It was quite good...a mix between cauliflower and broccoli.

Candied Orange and Chocolate Biscotti

2009-11-08T23:02:00.000-08:00

I made these biscotti a few times in the past and always alter the recipe slightly. Sometimes I feel like a softer cookie so I'll add more butter and alter the bake temp and time or for a harder cookie, omit the butter and change the temp/time. I love cadied orange and the combination of the orange and the dark chocolate in the cookies is so good. I also made a pistachio/cranberry/white chocolate but failed to take pictures of the final products (for both). I always make the orange peel in advance because it does take some time to make. I use the recipe for candied orange peel found on Food Networks site.

Candied Orange and Dark Chocolate Biscotti

2 cups All Purpose Flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3/4 cups sugar

1/4 cup unsalted butter (1/2 stick--softened)

1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup candied orange peel

1 cup chopped dark chocolate

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat
Whisk flour and baking powder in a bowl
With a stand mixer mix together butter and sugar with the paddle attachment.
Add eggs to the butter and sugar one at a time until light yellow and fluffy
Add flour mixture and mix just until combined
Gently fold in the candied orange peel and chocolate
Form into two 13″ X 3″ logs and place on the parchment paper side by side
Bake for 40 minutes or until brown move to a cooling rack and cool for about 30 minutes.
Cut the logs into 1/2″ thick slices with a serrated knife.
Place the slices cut side down on the baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes turning them over halfway through the baking time.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

2009-10-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

Ryan and I love homemade chocolate chip cookies-although I am never quite satisfied with the results...until now. I came across this recipe when a co-worker/fellow baker said she saw a recipe in the NY Times for the best chocolate chip cookie. A few weeks later I remembered our conversation and looked up the recipe. It called for a few things I lacked in my pantry: chocolate baking disks and bread flour. I made my way over to Whole Foods and found the bread flour. The chocolate disks were a little harder to find but I eventually found them in the baking isle in boxes ( E. Guittard Chocolate Wafers). I bought 1 box of the semisweet and one of the bittersweet. *note: these are expensive cookies but well worth it--the chocolate (1lb boxes) were $10 each!

I made the dough but I increased all ingredients by 1/2. I let the dough rest in the fridge over night and baked them the next night after work. Ryan helped me scoop out the dough and form it into 3.5oz balls. We sprinkled them with Fleur de Sel and baked them for about 20 min. These are by far the best chocolate chip cookies! We made about 6 and froze the rest of the dough balls. I think freezing the dough preformed is such a great thing to do. That way we can take out two and bake them and not have to worry about overeating. Did I mention that these cookies are huge! I'm sure the caloric and fat intake is equal to eating about 3 tollhouse cookies! These aren't too sweet and the salt on top gives a nice salty/sweet flavor. The thin chocolate wafers are great in the cookie (I don't think I'll ever go back to standard choc. chips) they make nice layers of chocolate in the cookie. I've posted the recipe below it is Jacques Torres recipe and was posted in the NY Times. (I increased the ingredients below by half the first time I made them and more recently stuck to the original amounts).

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from The New York Times, which adapted it from Jacques Torres’ recipe

Makes about 16-18 5-inch cookies

Time: 45 minutes (for 1 6-cookie batch), plus at least 24 hours’ chilling

8 1/2 ounces cake flour
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
10 ounces light brown sugar
8 ounces granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate wafers/disks, at least 60 percent cacao content
Sea salt (I used Fleur de Sel)

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

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.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat. Set aside.

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. * freeze remaining dough in 31/2 ounce balls and enjoy for up to a month (place frozen dough on parchment covered cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree preheated oven for 20-22minutes.

Macarons-- THAT's what all the fuss is about!

2009-09-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

Day 3

Disaster... that pretty much sums it up. Right when I got home from work, to a hot apartment, I knew it wasn't going to be a good idea to take on the macaron list I had prepared the day before. Well, I did anyway...I had to...I had asked Ryan to set out the egg whites a few hours before to come to room temp. Everything was ready. Oh...what a waste. I now know why French macarons are considered a very finicky cookie to make.

Let's just say out of the five flavors I made (banana-walnut, almond, strawberry, pistachio and spiced pecan) ZERO turned out. Maybe it was because I made a huge bowl of meringue and divided it five ways or maybe it was too humid/not humid enough or just too dang hot. Maybe I mixed the egg whites too much or had the wrong sugar egg ratio, or maybe the macaron gods were just not looking down favorably on me. Whatever the cause they were just a disaster (well, they still tasted good). I'll spare you the details of my mini breakdown after the second batch went in and slowly began to ooze out of the nicely formed shell. Ugh. I'll be taking a break from macarons for awhile.

Macarons-- Really, what's all the fuss about?

2009-09-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

Day 2

After the first successful attempt I decided to try out new flavors. I came across Tartlette's post about strawberry macarons and was intrigued. I used the same basic shell recipe as I used before (Doughmesstic's) but substituted some of the powdered sugar for powdered strawberries. We had some freeze-dried strawberries that I finely ground in the coffee grinder. I didn't add an extracts or other flavorings. The other macaron I made was pistachio. Using the same recipe just substituting half of the almonds for pistachios.

When it came to the filling I decided on doing a vanilla buttercream for both. My only experience with making buttercream is the 1 stick of butter to 1lb powdered sugar with a dash of milk and flavoring. This time I opted to try something new and make the buttercream that Tarlette used for her strawberry macarons. I really didn't know what to expect with whisking the egg whites over the double boiler and hoped they were heated/mixed enough. I followed the rest of the recipe but realized that the only butter I had was salted and it resulted in a very buttery buttercream. To compensate I added more sugar and vanilla to half of it and added powdered strawberries to the other. By the time I was ready to assemble the macarons I was tired and rather sloppily slathered on the vanilla buttercream on the pistachio shells and strawberry buttercream on the strawberry shells. My official taste tester, Ryan, was eager to try these out but after our taste tests we both decided the buttercream was too much and ended up removing all but a very thin layer on each macaron. I still had the problem with the tops of the shells getting too dark but overall I though it was a success and took them into work the next day. They were a big hit!

Although they were not perfect, I still thought they were great and decided I would make some more later in the week. The macaron frenzy continued...and to tell you the truth I was getting a little cocky...little did I know what awaited me later in the week...

Macarons--What's all the fuss about?

2009-09-24T22:06:00.001-07:00

Day 1

The first time I ever tasted one of this delightful cookies (well, that I recall tasting) was this spring when one of my department's visiting scholars (from France) brought a beautiful pale green box and left it in the kitchen, sending out an e-mail that notified us all that he had brought in some Macarons from France...and to please enjoy. I made my way up to the kitchen and a colleague and I marveled at the box. We opened it up and discovered that they were not little mounds of coconut that we associate the word Macaroon with but an entirely different cookie (Macaron-note the one "o" ). We were fascinated by the beautiful colored cookies and made our way downstairs with a few to try. They were amazing and we immediately looked them up to discover what flavors we were trying. After a quick Google image search of "french macarons" we discovered that they were from Laduree. That night I began looking for recipes to attempt to replicate this distinct almond cookie. After reading a bunch of complicated recipes I decided that it would be just too much work. I found recipes that instructed to leave the oven slightly open or to change the oven temp at different points during the baking. I also noticed that almost all of the recipes' measurements were by weight--quite difficult when you don't have a kitchen scale!

Fast forward 4+ months.
I came across Doughmesstic's blog and found a less terrifying recipe. I ran over to a chain home goods store and bought a coffee grinder and a kitchen scale and then off to the store to buy slivered almonds, egg whites and various extracts (well, coconut and hazelnut). I decided to just make a basic all-almond shell with hazelnut extract and fill with Nutella (I wasn't up for making buttercream). I used Doughmesstic's recipe found here but substituted the cherry flavoring for hazelnut extract. I also used jarred egg whites (eggology). I found the recipe to be very easy to follow and quickly had the batter ready to pipe out. I wasn't too successful at piping out the circles but figured for my first shot it wasn't too bad. After letting them sit for a bit I put them in the oven, turned on the oven light and patiently watched. From all the recipes I read, the foot on the macaron was very important. As they were baking Ryan came home and arrived to me dancing around singing "they have feet..they have feet...I did something right cause they have feet!!"

They turned out great for the first attempt. The tops were a little brown and I had some difficulty removing them from the parchment but all-in-all I counted it as a success and started planning the macaron flavors I would make next. That started off the week's macaron frenzy...and I began to think "What's all the fuss about? I don't see why people say these are so finicky, they are actually really easy to make!"

Welcome!

2009-09-24T21:11:00.000-07:00

This is all new to me, well, blogging is. I have always loved baking and have recently discovered some very cool baking blogs, which have inspired me to bake new things and to blog about them! I've never been a great writer so please bear with me through choppy sentences, misspelled words and faulty grammar. As for keeping this updated..I'll try! (Disclosure: I'm notorious for getting project inspired and only staying interested for short while). The first few posts coming up will be about some recent baking adventures including Macaron attempts 1, 2, & 3 followed by the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie I ever baked...and ate.