'Better Than You' Choco-HazelnutTart

Dear Amanda,

Yum.



I have dubbed this dessert "Better Than You" Tart because it puts my earlier tarts to shame. I finally gave in and bought a little food processor, brought it home, and commenced toasted-hazelnut chopping. The crust actually has hazelnut dust in it (just a heads up--I am fairly certain this is what fairies use). So goooooooood. Tricky to work with though, because the oils in the nuts make the dough much stickier than normal. I stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes after a first failed attempt at getting the crust into the pan.

I have recently become obsessed with real whipped cream, which literally and figuratively tops this off. That stuff is amazing. Cool whip is sacrilege. It shouldn't be allowed to masquerade under the guise of whipped cream. I hate cool whip.



...yes, I know those two photos were almost identical. I couldn't choose.

Ingredients:
Crust:
1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick cold butter cut into pieces
4 tablespoons ice water

Chocolate Filling:
7 oz semisweet chocolate
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch salt
2/3 cup heavy whipping cream (I can't seem to go a week without this...so bad for meee)
3 large eggs

Instructions:
-blend hazelnuts with sugar in food processor. Add flour and salt till blended. Add butter, chop until corse crumbs. Add water and form into disk. Refrigerate or freeze until firm.
-Roll it out and transfer to pan! Then refrigerate it again, until firm, because your hands probably got it all warm.
-Bake at 425 for 20-30 minutes. Cool.
-Prepare filling in saucepan by adding the chocolates and butter until melted. Stir in sugar, vanilla, and salt and then remove from heat.
-In a bowl, whisk cream and eggs a bit. Whisk this into your chocolate. Yum.
-Pout chocolate into the crust, bake 15-17 minutes at 350.
-Scrape the choco-remnants from the saucepan and eat as is or with graham crackers.
Yum.

As good as this is, my favorite dessert EVER goes to kunafa. Have you had this? I am convinced that they serve kunafa in heaven; it fits right in with the golden theme. I need to find a good recipe that is actually in English. Even then I doubt my abilities to replicate its wonders. Things that kunafa makes me think of:

-warm drinks in the bleak midwinter; tea, coffee, hot chocolate...
-cider, Christmas, and draft horses on Christmas tree farms
-fireplaces
-family
-sheep. Wooly ones on green hills at dusk.
-if the TARDIS were a dessert, she would be kunafa (so golden!)
-summer honey
-the lamp post in Narnia
-the hearts of stars

Sorry. It's just so good.

If you don't read to the bottom, you might miss this insanity.

You know what else is good? Sweetened condensed milk.

Much love,

Celia

Nautical Cupcakes

Celia,



















I told you I would be back again tonight! One of my coworkers had to bring something to a nautical-themed bridal shower, so she commissioned me to make some nautical cupcakes. The cupcakes themselves are just a white Duncan Hines box mix, because that's what she asked for. The frosting is a plain white buttercream made with shortening instead of butter because I didn't know if this would be an inside or outside event and buttercream can melt in the heat. The decorations are marshmallow fondant, which I think is a little harder to work with but much tastier than regular fondant.


For any readers unduly impressed with the frosting, this is super easy - just use a piping bag and a big star-shaped piping tip and squeeze it onto the cupcake, with a little swirling action. Instant snazziness! To make the frosting look a little more like ocean water I mixed up a thick batch and then added milk and coloring, but didn't mix it well, so there were swirls of white and areas where the frosting was thicker. That came out of the piping tip looking like foamy water.


I made the shapes out of marshmallow fondant (I'll put the recipe for that below) and used cookie cutters for the life preservers. The anchors are a little wonky, but those I did freehand. I painted the shapes with gold and silver luster dust mixed with some vodka, which is becoming one of my favorite things. Luster dust! Not vodka. Though that's ok too.

Marshmallow Fondant

8 oz. marshmallows
1 lb (4 c.) powdered sugar, plus more for surface and kneading
2 tbsp. water
Food coloring (optional, but I recommend gel colors for this)

Pour the marshmallows and water into a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for one minute, until the marshmallows have puffed up hugely. Mix in the powdered sugar until you have a very sticky dough. If the entire batch is going to be the same color, add the coloring here. Grease your hands with Crisco and dump the dough onto a surface liberally dusted with powdered sugar. Knead the fondant for several minutes, adding more powdered sugar when it gets sticky, until you have a smooth, fairly stiff fondant. At this point you can divide the fondant and knead in food coloring, or package it up and save it. I like to make colored fondant in advance, because gel colors often get more intense after about a day. This will keep for about a week.

Your turn! Much love,

Amanda

Mint Oreo Truffles

Celia,

Gosh I have been bad at posting the last week. I have actually been baking, but just haven't had the chance to post - especially since our internet has been down twice. Grr.

Anyway, these are my super easy yet much-loved mint Oreo truffles. You have probably seen these as plain Oreo truffles, with white chocolate coating. These are pretty much the same idea, just minty! The basic idea behind this variety of truffle is that you take a package of Oreos or some other type of hard cookie and crush them into dust. Then you mix all that with a package of cream cheese, roll the dough into balls, and dip them in melted chocolate. I've seen it done with Nutter Butters, and I am sure it would work with other things.

That bowel is actually part of my new mortar and pestle.

I think I saw a blog post saying it could be done with Girl Scout Thin Mints, and the blogger said it would probably work with mint Oreos too. I should probably save these links when I see them. Anyway, I went out looking for mint Oreos and my stupid grocery store didn't have any! Instead, I bought some plain Oreos and some mint extract and made it work. I covered them in some melted mint chocolate disks, which I think really makes the mint-chocolate flavor work, and drizzled some melted mint chocolate chips on top (I can't find those chips outside of Christmas and I really like the lighter green color. I'm almost out of them and it will be bad when I am).
I am also very messy with the whole chocolate-covering thing!

The actual recipe:

Mint Oreo Truffles

1 package chocolate sandwich cookies
About 1 tsp. mint extract
1 8oz. package cream cheese
Mint-chocolate melting disks
Optional decorations

Crush the sandwich cookies, either in a food processor or by hand in a big Ziploc bag until they are about the consistency of wet sand. Mix in the cream cheese and the mint extract. Roll the dough into one-inch balls and place on a cookie sheet. I strongly recommend freezing or chilling the balls for about an hour. Melt the chocolate disks and dip the chilled dough balls into the melted chocolate. Decorate as desired. Enjoy!

I have another post that might be up sometime today. Love you!

Amanda

Career Fallback Pancakes

Dear Amanda,

Let's bankrupt IHOP. It should be easy; all we need are pancakes, strawberries, and heavy whipping cream. I made these yesterday when I had leftover strawberries from making cup-pies. For those not familiar with cup-pies, see this clip of Pushing Daisies for an adorable explanation. For those already familiar with cup-pies and Ned, the pie-maker, hit repeat several times while a large, goofy smile spreads across your face.

Seriously though, the above creation was made from 1) strawberries sliced and mixed with sugar and lemon juice to taste; 2) pancakes made from Jiffy mix + one egg; and 3) heavy whipping cream with sugar to taste, whipped until soft peaks blessed me with their presence. I suppose that doesn't really count as baking, does it? Oops. Well, they sprouted from a baked good.

Cup-pies!





I have no idea why the images are staggering that way. Also fairly simple little buggers to make--use your favorite pie dough and plop in the strawberry filling that I mentioned earlier on the pancakes, but add a thinkener like tapioca or cornstarch. I had no tapioca so I used the cornstarch and nothing horrible occurred. Thank goodness. Yay cornstarch. Amanda, you have probably perfected the aesthetics of these little guys, but every time I make them they erupt filling all over the pan. Slightly mars their appearance, but it gives me an excuse to eat the thin layer of warm candy-like strawberry film off the top of the muffin tins so....there's a bright side to everything?

I am posting like crazy this summer, but when school starts again my side is going to drop off horribly.

Much love!

Celia

Evil Scheme Brownies

Amanda,

The pound cake is a great idea. It would look very summery with some fresh fruit around it as well. I can't wait to get strawberries!! I admit though, when I initially saw your latest post I thought they were savory, not sweet, sandwiches! I thought, what kind of meat IS that?! I blame lack of sleep.

If I were a baking supervillain, I would blackmail, bribe, and seduce my victims with these brownies. I think a chemical reaction occurs somewhere during the process and the cinnamon turns into crack. It's not the only explanation, but it is certainly apt. I like to use sea salt in them--the larger grains remind me of those wonderful Lindt sea salt chocolate bars. You get a crunch of salt at an unexpected moment, and it complements the sweetness perfectly. The texture is also ideal--balanced somewhere between too fluffy and too gooey.

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350, grease 13" by 9" pan. In medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl combine melted butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, combine with dry ingredients. Bake 25-30 minutes! YUM!



I also have a bread experiment to share. I nabbed this recipe via The Curvy Carrot because it was easy and I had all the ingredients on hand. I borrowed some loaf pans from the RLC and started kneading. I seriously love kneading. I also love the astonished faces of my dorm neighbors when they walk into the kitchen at midnight and see me hands deep in dough. The bread was very basic, but I paired it with homemade strawberry jam for a sweet snack and made an herb pork loin sandwich with it for lunch today.

Much love! (And seriously, come visit me at the end of June or anytime in July!)

Celia

Sandwich Cookies of a Few Varieties

Celia,

That cake looks amazing! I wish I could try it. I recommend that pound cake that we made together last summer - perhaps at some point I will make it and post it. I can't take credit for it though - it's from a friend.

I recently found a recipe for Chocolate Chip Filled Melting Moments while wandering around the internet, and was intrigued. I almost didn't make them, because I am a snob and the blogger mentioned a certain author with whom I have some bones to pick. (Relevant to that fact, I am currently watching a far superior vampire narrative, Buffy. I am a nerd.) It also called for cake flour and I didn't have any. It always annoys me when I don't have a necessary ingredient - how could I not have something in my kitchen?

But I couldn't get them out of my head, so I picked up some cake flour and went at it. The first batch of cookies looked pretty much like the Erin Cooks' pictures, but were unexpectedly crunchy. They were a little hard to eat, what with the size and the squishing of the frosting.

The cookies have a long bake time, but I took the second batch out a little sooner and they were a little more "melting." I would recommend it. I also considered using the food processor to crunch up some chocolate chips, and I wish I had. I think the cookies would be tastier if the filling were a little less lumpy.

Also, please note that the first cookie pictures were taken with the lousy old camera and my horrible photography skills, and the next ones were taken with my awesome new camera and the same old lousy skills.

After I made them, I kept thinking about other things I could do with the cookie base. I couldn't sleep because my head was full of visions of sandwich cookies. For the next batch, I rolled out the dough and cut out the cookies so they would be a little smaller. I also baked them for maybe half the time or less. Then I filled them with a raspberry frosting that I made with a terribly sophisticated recipe: I threw some raspberries in the mixer with powdered sugar, a little vanilla, and powdered sugar, and mixed until it was tasty.

After I filled the cookies I dipped them in some melted chocolate and drizzled some white chocolate on top. The white chocolate is relatively easy to do but always impresses people - I fed the cookies to my coworkers and they were unreasonably impressed.

Either way, you are up to baking and I am excited to see what you make!

Love you,

Amanda

Honeycomb Cake

Amanda,

At the risk of sounding like a Williams-Sonoma sales associate, I present--The Honeycomb Cake!

I am a real fan of shaped pans and molds--when they work, your end product is a no-fuss dessert that looks like it was impossible to make. (One of the guys who lives in my dorm asked me if I did this pattern by hand. Ha!) As it turns out, none of my fears about the pan had any foundation. The cake fell out without even additional encouragement (shaking, etc). Nothing stuck behind and the pull apart segments obliged perfectly. Below is the WS catalog photo:



The cake looked almost exactly like this, only I slathered it in a honey glaze instead of sprinkling it with powdered sugar.

Note: usually I disregard any direction that forbids me from devouring my dessert without cooling. Honestly, this cakes improves the longer it sits--a few mornings after I originally baked it the flavor and texture seemed better than when I had first pulled it out of the oven . . . mysterious, but true.

I am looking for an alternate recipe for the pan, since the batter was very heavy and took me a while to create (partially because I don't have a food processor and I used a very small paring knife to fabricate "ground almonds." Don't try it.) It has to be a reasonably dense cake though, so that the shape holds. Any suggestions?

Cake:
4 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
16 Tbs unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 milk
1/2 cup toasted sliced almonds, ground

Honey Glaze:
4 Tbs unsalted butter
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 honey
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
2 Tbs. water

I am currently too lazy to write out all the directions. if you really want to make it, ask me and I will elaborate.

Love!

Celia