Triple Chocolate Coffee Bean Cookies

We finally made this recipe. Yes, I changed the name, but that's because we used coffee beans, not espresso beans. I'm too cheap to buy chocolate-covered espresso beans, so I decided we could make our own, and certain places online said that one can use any dark roast to do so. Hence, we bought the darkest roast we could that was on sale at Albertsons and was free trade (conveniently, it was also organic and the same price as regular coffee--which we discovered it always is, even when they aren't all on sale--I've never actually looked at the coffee there before). Then, yesterday morning, instead of cleaning the house, I melted chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% cocoa, of course) in our Little Dipper (it was free with our big crock pot) and made chocolate-covered coffee beans...for the next hour. I am no longer too cheap to buy chocolate-covered espresso beans unless we're going to have a chocolate-covering party. I also made chocolate-covered almonds, a chocolate-covered oatmeal peanut butter cookie, and a big mass of chocolate and coffee beans when I was really sick of it at the end. I would like to say, however, that melting chocolate in the Little Dipper is the way to go. It took about 15-20 minutes to melt, but it didn't get very hot at all, and it stayed consistently melted (the Little Dipper stayed plugged in) for the entire time. I was pleased (the idea of melting chocolate in a crock pot came from here).

Our friends Clara and Cindy came over for dinner and cookie making last night. We had Taco Soup, salad, and chips with cheesy salsa, and then we got down to the real reason anyone was there: making these cookies. We basically followed the recipe (except for all the caveats like "aluminum-free"--well, we may have followed those, but I don't actually know--I've never checked. I'm pretty sure our Costco eggs are not organic and I know our Albertsons imitation vanilla extract would not be considered "high quality") except that we used only 1 cup of (local) whole-wheat flour (not pastry flour) and 1.5 cups of (unbleached) white all-purpose flour and we used 1 cup white and 1 cup brown sugar. I thought the recipe was a bit too high maintenance--beat the butter until fluffy all by itself first? Really? But I actually followed the given directions. I don't think it made a bit of difference. The cookies are good, but Ryan is not a fan of the chocolate-covered coffee beans in them (he's not a fan of chocolate-covered espresso beans in general), and I think they'd be better without those as well; next time we'll add more chocolate chips or some peanut butter chips.

Speaking of peanut butter, Clara and I decided that we could add peanut butter to the cookies as well next time (I usually make cookie recipes with 3/4 of the butter that they call for; we didn't this time, but I think it would have been fine--dare I say better?--if we had. So next time, we may use 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter--if we're feeling adventuresome. Otherwise, we'll use 3/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter. I say these things like we're actually going to carefully measure...you all know that's not true!). Clara and I also declared the dough to be (as usual) significantly better than the cookies, Ryan didn't comment, and Cindy is a rational, self-controlled person who is able to overcome her desire to eat cookie dough with raw eggs and did not partake of the dough.

Soda Bread

We made this recipe last night to go with our Italian Chili (which had no zucchini, but did have some sun dried tomatoes and spinach). We used bread flour instead of all-purpose flour (it's bread--shouldn't it have bread flour in it?) and I was lazy and kneaded it in the bowl instead of on a floured surface. Well, I attempted to knead it in the bowl. The line in the recipe that says the dough will be sticky--well, that's a bit of an understatement.

I'm not incredibly impressed with this bread. Ryan's assessment is that it's like cornbread, except with wheat. It definitely did not go with the Italian chili, but I really wanted bread. It was fast, which is a definite advantage some days. It's pretty good with honey or cinnamon sugar, but it will not make it onto the list of things I crave.

Chocolate Hazelnut Latte Cookies

I really want to try this recipe, but we are currently (not that this is a strange state of affairs) lacking espresso beans, thus we cannot make chocolate covered espresso beans nor espresso powder. So I settled last night for making chocolate chocolate chip cookies based on a recipe from a Hershey's recipe sampler ("7 Great Ways to Make It Chocolate!"). My office mate declared these to be her favorite of my cookie products. I think they're pretty darn tasty myself and Ryan also claims to be a fan. I must confess my cookie making secret, however: really good chocolate makes any cookie a really good cookie (this is apparently not true for peanut butter brownies)--in this case it was Ghiradelli 60% cocoa chocolate chips (the standard) and Ghardetto (no idea on the spelling on that one) cocoa powder. Here's the recipe:

1 cup butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar (I'm sure 1 cup white and 1 cup brown would be fine--or any other proportions, for that matter)
2 eggs
2 tsps (ish--I never measure vanilla) vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat flour (the flour proportions can be changed also)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup cocoa powder (but throw leftover hazelnut fake coffee mix into the 3/4 cup measuring cup before filling the rest with cocoa powder--yes, everyone should have a 3/4 cup measuring cup--it's my favorite one)
1 1/2- 2 cups chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Combine flour, cocoa, soda, salt; gradually blend into creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto baking stone. Bake 10-12 minutes. Cool slightly, then move to wire rack to cool completely.

One other cookie secret: I always use salted butter and close to the full amount of salt in the recipe--I think the end result tastes better that way, especially when it involves chocolate. Also, these are the directions from the original recipe. I didn't actually follow them very well, but the cookies are fine (as in, I mixed the eggs with the butter and sugar at the beginning and didn't do the whole "gradually blend" thing).

Yes, I know there's nothing "latte" about these cookies really, but it sounded fancy. I'm sure a latte would be a lovely accompaniment to them.

Peanut Butter "Brownies"

I made this recipe to welcome Ryan back to MT. Of course, I didn't actually follow the recipe: I melted the butter in the microwave (why in the world would you get a pan AND a mixing bowl dirty unless you had to?!), used about 1/4 cup of white sugar and 1/4 cup of brown sugar (and they are not lacking in sweetness) and about 1/4 cup of white flour and 1/4 cup wheat flour (by "about" I mean I was eyeballing 1/2 of the 1/2 cup measuring cup), and added 2 tsp cocoa powder, some peanut butter chips, and some chocolate chips. They're not bad...but they're not all I dreamed they would be. Not even close. I think they'd be better with creamy peanut butter, but we don't have creamy in the pantry regularly.

Domesticity Abounded

We had a domestic flurry this past weekend--on Sunday, I made homemade pizza using this recipe for the crust. The recipe is pretty annoying to read, and I didn't feel like the dough really superior to any other dough that I've ever made, so I'm not necessarily recommending it. It did set the smoke alarm off, however, since I was preheating the oven with the baking stone in it at 450 degrees, which caused a bit of smoke. Ryan waved stuff in front of the smoke detector and it stopped quickly. For toppings, we had cheese (of course), Italian sausage, onion, green pepper, and tomatoes. Oh, and I broke the rolling pin when I was rolling out the dough. While I was making the pizza, Ryan was busy designing a skirt for me based on the one skirt I wear all the time (all the time being the 3-4 times a year that I bother to wear a skirt), thereby taking part in the domestic flurry. After we ate, I helped (not much) him cut out the pieces. When we were done cutting, we'd had enough domesticity for a while, so we went to play tennis (we are both terrible!).

On Monday afternoon, I decided to sew my skirt together. However, my sewing machine hates me and has tension issues whenever I use it. Ryan has no problems with it, however, so he took over when I got frustrated (which was basically right away. I think the sewing machine likes him better because he's a boy and the machine is blue. My sister has a pink machine that has no problem with her--and she doesn't even like pink--not that I do either...). I needed to do something useful, so I went downstairs to make key lime pie. Now, if you're like me, you look at that recipe and think, "Oh, a pie that has only 4 ingredients in the filling and three in the crust. This will be fast!" There, my dear reader, you would be wrong. Well, the crust is fast, but key limes are tiny things with many seeds that do not produce much juice. "But you only need a half cup of key lime juice," you say? Ah, but a half cup of key lime juice took me at least half an hour (at least!) and at least 20 key limes (good thing they're so light and were only about $1.29/lb). And then there's the lime zest. Yes, you only need two teaspoons (I checked that twice before I started just to make sure it said "teaspoons" and not "tablespoons" and then, once again, thought, "Oh, this will be fast"). I grated almost all the peels from the limes that I used for the juice before I had two very scant teaspoons and declared myself done. I now understand why some people have juicers (I was cutting the limes into quarters and squeezing them--it's easier if you cut them the opposite way that I normally do--that's a good description, isn't it? Okay, the opposite way of the little membranes inside)...if I were to make this pie again, I might actually invest in one...or at least borrow one. I'm not sure if a zester would be that helpful having never used one myself, but perhaps zesting before squeezing would be more effective (I didn't want to do that when sqeezing by hand because I was afraid that the weakened rind would not get the juice out as effectively). Now, having complained about the work, I would like to say that key limes are actually quite juicy; it's just that juicy when you're the size of a small bouncy ball does not quickly translate to a half cup of juice. Overall, the pie is good, and we are still enjoying it with real whipped cream (whipping cream was on sale and we're mad at Albertsons for no longer selling the cheap brand of the squirty kind, so I bought and whipped real whipping cream). The skirt is almost all done (I sewed a little bit on it after the machine got warmed up, but Ryan did most of it). Our domesticity has ended, however, seeing as it is 105 degrees outside and 81 degrees downstairs in our house. We're living on fruit, salad, and cheese and crackers these days (okay, it was a little less hot yesterday--like, 3 degrees--so I made a "pizza burrito" for lunch using a sundried tomato and basil tortilla and the toaster over and Ryan made a pork stir fry) or anything we can grill--we practically don't have to turn the grill on to cook things!

Scones

We ran out of muffin cups during Lent, and, as I had given up buying non-essential things at the grocery store considering the state of our pantry closet, no muffin cups were on the horizon any time soon. However, muffin mixes abounded seeing as I (before Lent) kept buying a few at a time whenever they were on sale. Ryan hates washing the muffin tins, especially when muffins have been made in them without muffin cups, and I'm not a big fan of it, either, so making muffin-cup-free muffins was out of the question. Hence, I started pondering the similarities between muffin recipes and scone recipes. After comparing them in Betty Crocker, I decided that I could make scones from muffin mixes as follows:

Dump muffin mix into bowl. Add 1-2 teaspoons of baking powder, stir all together. Cut in 1/3 cup cold butter (yes, butter--we have switched from margarine since we have become convinced that trans fats truly are awful for you--and us--though at the time I started these I was probably still using margarine or shortening if I didn't have margarine/butter) using a pastry blender--you probably want to cut the butter up into smaller chunks using a knife before attacking it with the pastry blender. When the mixture is the consistency that it should be (according to one scone recipe I looked at, it looks like "wet sand"--I just go with "fine crumbs" myself), add a beaten egg and a few tablespoons of milk and stir until dough comes together and leaves sides of bowl. You don't want to over-mix (same idea as with biscuits). You may have to add a bit more milk as you're going. I started just pouring some milk in without measuring at any point, but you want the dough to be kind of like biscuit dough, so don't add too much. If you're making the scones from a muffin mix that has things to add at the end, such as blueberries or apple filling, stir that stuff in carefully here--once, again, take care not to mix too much. Then, if you like round drop scones, drop the size you'd like onto a baking stone (or a baking sheet if that's all you have) and bake at whatever temperature the muffin box says for somewhere between 15-20 minutes (time is pretty variable on these--watch for whatever color of doneness you like and take them out then--I make it up every time). If you like triangular scones, you can knead the dough lightly on a floured surface 4 or 5 times, then squish it (okay, most cookbooks use the word "pat" instead of "squish," I think, but squish is more like what I do) down to the thickness that you think it should be before it bakes (they will rise some) either in a circle or a rectangle, cut that into triangles, and place the triangles on the baking stone/sheet (or squish it directly on the stone/sheet, score it into triangles and cut them apart as soon as you deem them baked to your satisfaction--but I think they take longer to bake using that method and I can't see any great advantage over separating them before baking. So it's your choice: break-and-bake or bake-and-break) and cook them the same way you would drop scones.

Having now used up all but one of our muffin mixes (and the last one is Cinnamon Streusel, which we had way too many of before, so I'm sick of them), I graduated to scones from scratch. The first ones I made were apple cinnamon streusel scones and chocolate chip scones based on the Betty Crocker recipe for basic scones. They both turned out more like flavored biscuits, so that recipe has since been abandoned. We had to take breakfast to church yesterday, so we tried two new scone recipes--this time Ryan picked them out. Both of them are from Joy of Baking. I was not impressed with the chocolate chip scones (though I did forget the egg wash and the cinnamon sugar, which may have helped), but the cranberry oat scones, even without the egg wash, the sugar on top, and the lemon or orange zest, were amazing. I was leaning toward the conclusion that I should just give up on chocolate chip scones, but Ryan says we should try making chocolate chip oat scones using the cranberry oat scones recipe, so we'll probably do that once before completely despairing. Oh, by the way, we only had salted butter, so I just left the salt out of the dough.

Based on these recipes, if I make scones from muffin mixes again, I will probably add 1/2-1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, some oats, closer to 1/2 cup butter, and skip the egg instead of what I did before. They were good as described above, but more like rich muffin tops than scones, so we'll see if making these alterations makes them more scone-like.

More Deep Dish Baker

Since the caring-for-your-stoneware instructions always suggest that a good way to start seasoning new stoneware is to bake refrigerated crescent rolls on it, our next adventure with the Deep Dish Baker was the mini-cinnamon rolls in this picture. Here is the recipe (also due to Pampered Chef--and this one we actually followed--except I think I added a bit of vanilla to the glaze), in case anyone's interested (in case anyone still reads this blog...):

Mini-Cinnamon Rolls
2 packages (8 ounces each) refrigerated crescent rolls
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup raisins, optional (We opted for no raisins.)

Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons apple juice or milk (Having no apple juice, we went with milk.)

Preheat oven to 350. Separate rolls into rectangles, press perforations. Spread with butter. Combine sugar, cinnamon, and raisins in Small Batter Bowl (clearly, one cannot make this recipe without having a Small Batter Bowl!). Sprinkle mixture over rectangles. Roll up each rectangle from short end. Cut each roll into 5 slices. Place slices cut side down (this was my favorite part of the directions since 3 of the 5 slices obviously have two cut sides) in ungreased Deep Dish Baker. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Mix glaze. Drizzle on top of warm rolls.

Yield: 40 mini-rolls.

New Stoneware

Ryan got a new stoneware round baker thing for Christmas. He has been wanting one for awhile, so he was very happy to finally be the proud owner. Stoneware, as many of you probably know, spends the first few months of its life with a cook being seasoned--absorbing all kinds of fats and oils so that it can make its own non-stick coating. You're supposed to bake some high fat items on it at the beginning to get it on its way to a happy, non-stick life. The first item we baked on it was biscuits (ok, I say "we" but it was really just Ryan--I had no part in it other than saying that I wanted biscuits for breakfast). They were very tasty, but not exceptionally helpful for the stoneware in its quest to be seasoned. So we decided to try something else. Since this new stoneware was from Pampered Chef, it came with a variety of recipes in which it (along with many other specially-named Pampered Chef products such as the "3-qt. Batter Bowl," etc.) could be used (all Pampered Chef products come with recipes in which they can be used--even things like strawberry corers--which, of course, have some sort of fancy name that appears somewhere in bold in the recipe--like to make a strawberry banana smoothie, "core all the strawberries with the Strawberry Coring Device." Anyway, back to the story). We took Blueberry Pizza Dessert to the January potluck at our church. Granted, what we actually took was "Mixed and Mashed Berry Pizza Dessert," but it was based on the Pampered Chef Blueberry Pizza Dessert recipe. It was very good, and since it has a real recipe, I'm going to include it here. The special name for the new stoneware is "Deep Dish Baker," which seems a bit odd to me since the depth of the baker is about 1.5 inches....

Blueberry Pizza Dessert
1 package (18-19 ounces) yellow cake mix
1 1/4 cups quick cooking oats (We used regular oats.)
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 egg
1/2 cup chopped nuts (Ryan chopped the non-chopped almonds that we bought because they were a lot cheaper than pre-chopped nuts.)
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 can (21 ounces) blueberry pie filling (We used semi-defrosted/semi-mashed frozen mixed berries--a whole bag--with a bit of sugar.)

Preheat oven to 350. In a Classic Batter Bowl, combine cake mix, 1 cup oats, and 6 tablespoons butter until crumbly (Pampered Chef must not make a pastry cutter or it would be mentioned here since that's the easiest way to do this). Reserve 1 cup crumbs for topping. Blend egg into remaining crumbs. Press into Deep Dish Baker forming a short rim. Bake for 12 minutes. Meanwhile, to reserved crumbs add remaining 1/4 cup oats, 2 tablespoons butter, nuts, sugar, and cinnamon. Mix well. Remove base from oven and spread with pie filling. Return to oven and bake 15-20 minutes or until crumbs are light golden brown. Cool completely. Cut into wedges. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream (oh, yeah, we skipped the whipped cream).

Scones!

Apparently Scone is a place in eastern Scotland, but as a pastry it might have its roots from the Dutch word schoonbrood which means pure/clean bread (this is all according to Merriam-Webster). Aunt Susan gave Rebekah a scone mix in her stocking this Christmas and I finally got around to making it last Sunday. It didn't fit the Dutch word, however, as it was a lemon, Poppy Seed scone mix, very much not pure/clean (Ok, things could be a lot less pure). A possible alternative etymology for these scones would be vervuildbrood, which the Internet tells me is polluted bread. The mix was from the Sticky Fingers Bakeries of Spokane Washington (which is ironic as we are much closer to Spokane then Aunt Susan is). On the package it also said "English Scones", which I guess throws out both the Dutch and Scottish roots.

I just noticed that according to the Sticky Fingers Bakeries of Spokane Washington scones originated in Scotland.

All this to say, they were delicious. The lemon chunks were a little hard sometimes, but that could be because they had to travel from Spokane to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to California, and then to Missoula before sitting in our cupboard for a while until finally being mixed with just water and baked. We took them to our Church small group and the scones were proclaimed Delicious by at least two people. Another asked if they were to be consumed with butter or sugar. Not knowing how to respond I said "You are supposed to eat them with cream and sugar... in your tea." There was no tea available, however.

So, thank you, Aunt Susan, for that adventure!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We forgot to set an alarm last night, so we slept in a bit. Hence, Ryan had to start working right when he got up. He was so deep into his work that he didn't notice me making noise downstairs (except when I had some crashing going on trying to get out the big thing of cookie cutters my Aunt Susan gave me a couple years ago--then he asked me if I was okay, but not what I was doing). So I made these biscuits, and right before they were done, I went upstairs and asked him, "If you were to have biscuits today, what would you want as topping on them?" His answer: "Pink with your face on them." I looked at him like he was nuts, so he said, "Chocolate chips? Is that the right answer?" So I had to clarify that I meant in the butter/jam/honey category. He then gave a very reasonable answer involving butter (ok, so it's margarine--not that it matters, just maintaining the accuracy of our reporting) and apricot low-sugar preserves (we recently discovered, compliments of Ryan's parents, that Smucker's low-sugar preserves taste a lot better than the full sugar stuff without any nasty-tasting artificial sweetners--they use half the normal amount of sugar so the taste actually resembles fruit instead of sugar with a faint hint of fruit). So I went downstairs, took the biscuits out of the oven, laughed at how some of them had risen, and margarined and preserved (hey, butter is a verb, why not margarine and preserve in the sense of jam?) his five biscuits and put "my face" on one of them with raspberry preserves--so it was kind of pink. He was shocked that I was so fast seeing as he had not noticed the noises I had been making previously were all involved in the biscuit-making process, so the biscuits were already done when he placed his order. You may notice that he didn't take the picture until he had eaten one and a fifth or so biscuits. 

Challah!

 As promised, here is the picture of the excellent loaf of challah that Rebekah made. Not only did it look delicious, it tasted spectacular. Since making this we have progressed to use the same basic recipe, but as small loaves with more wheat flour and some molasses. Making the bread in small loaves has made the bread easier to eat. We don't have to make a bunch of crumbs slicing it, and it is in a good size for one portion. Having it braided achieves this too as the braid chunks are easy to pull off.

I have been enjoying eating it by cutting a mini-loaf in half and toasting it with cheese (Tillamook special reserve white cheddar), then putting the two halves together and eating it with soup. Mmmmmmm.

Pride goes before the fall

We went out to breakfast (brunch, I guess) this morning and I had a Belgian waffle with strawberries and whipped cream. My response was, "Ryan, you make better waffles." (He makes really good mixed berry waffles that are excellent with kiwi and/or strawberries and whipped cream on top). Then we went to the grocery store later to get a marinade for our steak and we had sample brownies. My response was, "I make better brownies." Then we had a real American meal: steak and potatoes (I think I once told Ryan that I would probably never make a meat and potatoes meal--so he had to do this one). We started off with a really good salad, and the steak was pretty good, but the potatoes, which were my baby, were not so great. Apparently grilling them is not the best way to go. I'm sure there are many places out there that make better spicy potato wedges than I do!