peanut butter brownies

Hi all,

I know its been a ridiculously long time since I've posted here, and I'm so sorry! But to make up for it, I've got a great and super easy recipe for when you want to dress up something without doing any extra effort. Let's be honest--effort is overrated and often unnoticed...and a little panache goes a long way.

So here we are. Peanut butter brownies plus swirling.

Recipe--your standard brownie recipe OR extra dark espresso brownies:

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
one stick butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
espresso powder to taste
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 cup flour

I also use raw cacao as a thickener, but its hard to come by unless you have a health-conscious and all-too-generous mommy supplier. So we'll call that one a draw.

MELT the butter in a big saucepan.
ADD the chocolate and, once the chocolate is melted, the sugar.
TRANSFER to a big mixing bowl.
ADD two eggs and mix well.
ADD espresso powder and vanilla
ADD 1/4 cup flour OR raw cacao, until mixture is somewhat thicker, but still quite syrupy.

In another saucepan heat 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter on low heat until melted slightly.

POUR chocolate mixture into a baking pan (8x8 is the standard, but I used a circular pie pan.)
POUR peanut butter over it in drops.

Now here's the fun part. Take a knife, and skim it over the surface of the brownie to swirl the peanut butter with the chocolate. Note: This takes practice, unless you are my amazingly gifted roomate Sarah who got it on her first go. One thing to avoid--don't swirl the chocolate over the peanut butter or mix the two if possible...this just leaves you with weird tan streaks in your brownie and not the beautiful peanut butter swirl you see below.

When you're done swirling, put it in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes--give it more time if it needs longer (up to 30 minutes.)

ENJOY!

daring baker's june challenge: bakewell tart!

so I am a big dork, and joined a baking-blog collective the daring bakers. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself once a month to do something I hadn't completely planned. This month's challenge was the bakewell tart--basically a crusty pie tart filled with jam and covered with a frangipane cream (my favorite: ALMOND!)

I designed a recipe using a few elements from the Tartine cookbook, one of my favorites. The recipe (with pictures) follows.

Pie Crust (half of the Flaky Tart Crust recipe from Tartine):

1/3 cup cold water
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1.5 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt

Mix salt and water and put both in a bowl in the refrigerator to keep cold (I've never seen this technique before but I like it.)

Cut butter into the flour in one inch pieces. Keep pulsing until mixture forms crumbles. Then, slowly drizzle in the cold water/salt mixture, until the mixture forms what Tartine dubs a "shaggy mass" (which just makes me think of scooby doo.) Continue to mix until a dough forms. Wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Frangipane:

2 cups ground almonds
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (one stick)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. almond extract
salt to taste

cream butter and sugar in a food processor, blender, or by hand. Add eggs and beat well. Finally, stir in ground almonds and extract. It should look a bit like this:

Assembly:

For my Bakewell tart, I used fresh blueberries instead of jam. I lined a 9 inch pie pan with parchment paper and pressed the pie dough flat inside of it, pushing up along the edges to form a crust. I then filled the bottom of the pie with fresh blueberries, which I covered with the frangipane. I baked the pie at 375 for roughly a half hour, until it was brown on top:

And then devoured with a special blueberry-mint sauce:

Blueberry Mint Sauce

1/2 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tb. water
1 tb. butter
1 quarter chopped mint

Heat blueberries and sugar in a small saucepan with 1 tb. water. Wait until the blueberries become liquid and begin to bubble. Add butter and mint and stir well.


Hooray June--fresh blueberries, fresh mint, and, naturally, almonds....

Rasberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Father's day:

My dad is a southern boy at heart. Nothing comes between him and a pecan pie (except maybe a good old fashioned oatmeal cookie.) But when my mom showed me a recipe in the New York Times for a raspberry-rhubarb cobbler, I couldn't pass it up. Next year, Dad.

Raspberry Rhubarb Cobbler: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/dining/103arex.html

2 pounds rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/4-inch pieces (about 6 cups)
2 1/2 cups fresh raspberries or 1 (10-ounce) package frozen raspberries, defrosted
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
For the biscuits:
1 cup all-purpose flour, more as necessary
2/3 cup fine cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2/3 cup heavy cream, more for brushing.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. For filling, in a large bowl, toss together rhubarb, raspberries, sugar and cornstarch. Allow mixture to stand while preparing biscuit dough.
2. To prepare biscuits, place flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt in a food processor and pulse to combine (or whisk everything together in a bowl).
3. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal (or use 2 knives to cut butter into flour mixture). Pour in cream and continue pulsing (or stir) until dough starts to come together, scraping down sides of bowl if necessary.
4. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat it together. Divide it equally into 8 balls, then flatten them slightly into thick rounds. Biscuit dough can be made up to a day in advance and refrigerated, covered, until needed.
5. Scrape filling and accumulated juices into a 2 1/2-quart gratin or baking dish (9 by 12 inches). Arrange biscuits on top of filling and brush with cream. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until filling is bubbling and biscuits are golden.

I pretty much followed the directions exactly, though of course I added a little extra ginger!!!

Here's how it looked!

Sorry for the long absence! Food to Come!

Hi ya'll!

Thanks to totally unstable stolen internet and a sense of compunction at work, I haven't posted here in a while...but don't worry, I've been baking!! What follows are some recipes I dreamed up this summer. Enjoy!

Deadliest of deadly chocolate cakes...

Yesterday was the double whammy of family events--my dad's birthday and my mother's graduation--and I was called upon to prepare a dark, dark, DARK chocolate cake for my mother. Counting on the tried and true classic chocolate cake on the back of the Hershey's box, I adjusted it slightly, resulting in a sinfully dark chocolate raspberry layer cake. Recipe follows:

Cake:
1 1/2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar or other sweetener (I used half brown, half white sugar)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup ricotta cheese or sour cream (optional)
2 cups flour
3/4 cup Dark Cocoa (i.e. Hershey's special dark or other dutch processed cocoa powder)
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups water
1 ounce dark semi-sweet baker's chocolate or chocolate chips.
Preheat oven to 350.
1. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy and light, an off-white color.
2. Add eggs (one at a time) and vanilla and sour cream/ricotta if using (I used ricotta to great effect.) Beat until well combined.
3. In a small bowl, sift together dry ingredients.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet in 3 batches, alternating with the water until well combined.
5. Add the chocolate (chopped or chips) to the batter and stir well to mix in.
6. Pour mixture into two greased 8 or 9 inch round baking pans. I also like to use parchment paper to line the pans, which helps me to move them when I am assembling the cake.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the cakes comes out clean. For more even layers, cut off the tops of each cake so that the top is completely flat.

Icing:

I used a simple ganache to ice this cake, which comes from Dorie Greenspan's fabulous book "Baking: From My Home to Yours." I cut up four ounces of baking chocolate (semi sweet) in a heat-proof bowl. Then I heated 1 cup of heavy cream in a saucepan and added it to the chocolate, stirring in a few tablespoons of butter as the glaze melted and settled. Unfortunately, my ganache came out a bit too liquid, so I ended up adding some cornstarch and cocoa to it to thicken it. But before that, I spread some of the liquidier glaze on the layers to soak into the cake and moisten it (probably not necessary as it was already quite moist.)

Glaze:

After soaking the inside parts of each layer with the more liquid form of the ganache, I spread a thick layer of raspberry jam (preheated for a few minutes in the microwave to loosen it up) on both layers and assembled the cake with the two trimmed tops facing one another. This left a piece of parchment paper on the top and bottom of the cake, which proved useful in transporting it from a cooling rack to a cake plate.

The total effect is wonderful--a deep chocolately icing, covering a very soft, delicate chocolate cake with a thin trace of raspberry/chocolate moistness in the center.

Who knew hershey's could do it so right??

FORFEIT: a hot mess

Hi all,

Just took the cake out of the oven and guess what!! It was a mess!

Actually, I should re-state that. The top was a mess. The bottom was perfect! The bottom cake was moist and buttery and soft and everything a cake should be. The top, however, was completely carmelized and stuck to the pan, ruining my (now burnt) design. it would have been salvageable in a surrealist world where black is a fruit color and burnt sugar is a flavor (oh wait....)

In any case, I'm now thinking my mistake was cooking the brown sugar too long. So if you make this, try decreasing the amount of cook time so that the sugar/butter mix doesn't reduce and stick to the pan like mine did. But definitely try out the dough mix if you want a delicious, light, and not-too-sweet base for your upside down cake!

Surrendering to Alex,

Jenny

Upside Down Cake Bake-off

Hi all,

So today's excitement is an UPSIDE DOWN CAKE BAKE-OFF competetion between me and my friend Alex (http://farcefodderandfoodstuffs.wordpress.com .) I got excited because my mom bought some really aesthetically impressive dried apricots and cranberries, so I decided I had to make a dessert to feature them (this is how my brain works--its not enough to just enjoy the apricots as they are..they MUST be combined with some sort of pastry to truly reach their potential.)

So here's the recipe I'm trying...it's in the oven as we speak, so results will follow!

Bottom of the Cake:
1 3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon ginger (of course!!)
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
scant 1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients. Beat together egg, milk, sour cream, sugar, and vanilla. Add to dry ingredients and mix until batter takes on a very smooth consistency (like pancake batter.)

Topping:
3/4 stick butter
2/3 cup brown sugar
apricots and cranberries (dried)

In a cast iron skillet, melt the butter. Add brown sugar, stir once, and let cook for about 3 minutes without stirring. Arrange cranberries and apricots in a design of your choosing on the surface of the pan with the part you want visible bottom down in the butter sugar mixture. Cook for 2-3 minutes on low heat.

Add batter to the skillet, and put in preheated oven (350) for approximately 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Enjoy!!!