Chocolate for Monday

While I have been reveling in fall flavors (apples, pumpkin, lots of spices), not everyone around here is quite as happy about it.  In fact, as I was assessing dessert options one night a few weeks ago (ginger crackles or caramel candy corn), Gillian looked at me and said, "Mommy, can't you just make us something chocolate?!"  Something chocolate often means brownies, but I was more in the mood for cookie baking.  So I hit the books to see what I could find.  Actually, I hit the magazines, too.  While I was waiting for all the new holiday baking magazines to arrive on the shelves, I pulled out some of my old ones for inspiration.  That's where I found these.

"These" are Triple Chocolate Cookies from the folks at America's Test Kitchen.  I found the recipe in my 2009 Cook's Illustrated Holiday Baking issue.  Definitely no shortage of chocolate in these!  The three chocolates referred to in the title are unsweetened chocolate and bittersweet chocolate chips, which are melted (along with the butter) and added to the batter, and semisweet chocolate chips that are stirred in at the end.  The mixing method reminds me more of making brownies than most cookie recipes.  First, the eggs and sugar are beaten together for several minutes.  Vanilla and coffee (I used espresso powder) are added for flavoring, then the melted chocolate/butter mixture is mixed in.  Finally, flour, salt and a bit of baking powder are folded in.  Since the batter is very soft, you let it sit at room temperature for half an hour or so to firm up.  I made my cookies a bit smaller than the recipe called for and baked them for about 10 minutes.

The verdict?  Well, Gillian was definitely thrilled with these cookies. =)  Brianna seemed pretty happy, too.  In fact, I think they were a hit with everyone here, so I'm sure I'll be making them again.  While they were fine with just the chocolates, I bet they'd be pretty tasty with some toasted pecans or dried cranberries or cherries mixed in.

While these aren't a traditional holiday cookie, if you're craving chocolate this time of year (or just need it to treat a case of the Mondays), I recommend trying these out.  You can find the recipe online at either Cook's Country or America's Test Kitchen.  For other great recipes from magazines, check out Magazine Mondays over at Cream Puffs in Venice!

Dough from Dorie

I've been in some sort of a blogging slump lately.  I've been baking, and even taking some pictures, but haven't been writing much.  I've even been having a hard time participating in the blogging events that I usually enjoy a lot.  So I'm trying to shake myself out of it.  Work has been crazy, but I don't want that to bring me down anymore.  Kids have been crazy, but hey, what else is new? =)  The holidays are here, bringing with them lots of fabulous cooking magazines, both regular November and December issues and some holiday newsstand specials.  This is the perfect time of year for blogging--in fact, I'm coming up on my second blogiversary very soon.  Hard to believe I've been at this that long!!

One thing that I'm looking forward to is the next round of Adopt-a-Blogger.  If you're a veteran blogger, please consider signing up.  I know Kristen always gets lots of newbies wanting help, so more experienced bloggers are always needed.

It's also been a while since I participated in Magazine Mondays.  But the above mentioned stack of magazines has inspired me.  In particular, something from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appetit caught my eye.  I used to subscribe to Bon Appetit, but stopped several years ago because I wasn't enjoying the magazine all that much anymore.  But that was before I started blogging and talking to other bakers via Twitter.  A couple months ago, I picked up an issue, based on comments from some of my tweeting friends.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it (the October 2009 issue).  For one thing, some of the articles are by authors I recognize and like a lot, such as the wonderful Dorie Greenspan.  And Peter Reinhart (breads in the November issue).  In fact, I decided to start subscribing again to save myself some money. =)

Anyway, where was I going with this?  Oh, right, the December issue.  Dorie's column jumped right out at me.  Sticky buns really aren't one of my favorites.  But these were different than the ones I've made before.  They use a Spiced Sweet Dough as the base.  I took a look at the recipe, and it's a sweeter, lean brioche with cinnamon, ginger and orange zest.  Mmm.  I had to make it.  But I didn't make sticky buns with it.  In addition to the recipe in the paper magazine, there's another one online for Streusel-Topped Chocolate-Cranberry Bread.  Now that sounded really good, especially since I recently discovered that I love cranberries and chocolate together.  The only problem is that I didn't read the recipe closely enough.  It wasn't until after I had chilled the sweet dough overnight that I realized that I was supposed to add the cranberries and chocolate before chilling.  Oops.  Now what?

I decided to play around.  I ended up using the dough to make something similar to a Danish braid, like I made here.  I took half of the dough and rolled it out into a rectangle.  I spread cream cheese filling down the middle third of the dough and cut the sides into strips for braiding.  (Check out some great how-to pics from Kelly at Sass & Veracity here.)  After braiding, I let the dough proof until puffy (maybe about an hour?) and then baked it for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees F.  For the other half of the dough, I used cream cheese filling and also some raspberry fruit butter.  I drizzled the still-warm bread with a simple glaze of powdered sugar and milk.

The verdict?  I really, really like this dough.  I will definitely be making it again.  I should have used more filling, since the dough rises a lot more than Danish dough, and the ratio of filling to pastry was off.  But it was still quite tasty.  Jamie and the girls all liked it, too.  Next up will be the chocolate-cranberry bread for sure. =)

You can find the recipe for the dough here.  I'm sure there are lots of other fun things that can be made with it.  And besides sending this over to Ivonne for Magazine Mondays, I'm submitting this to Yeastspotting.  Oh, and my TWD post will be coming in the next day or two, since Laurie said it was okay to post late this week due to the holiday.

Sweet treats

It's been a while since I've participated in Magazine Mondays.  This is probably my least favorite time of year for cooking magazines.  I don't grill much, and my passion is baking (though I do cook as well).  As a result, a lot of the recipes that are out there in magazines during the summer don't hold that much appeal for me.  Oh, there are some I like, but it's not like the baking bonanza you see during the fall and winter. =)  But I still read the magazines, and one or two things will really jump off the page at me.

This particular recipe is one of them.  As I was paging through the June/July issue of Fine Cooking, I ran across a picnic article.  The dessert was Ginger-Spice Sandwich Cookies with Lemon Cream.  I love ginger in cookies.  And the idea of lemon cream was intriguing.  All I needed was a good reason to make them.  I finally came up with one a couple weeks ago.

With the end of school looming, I had a bunch of baking to do.  I made dozens of mini cupcakes for Brianna's end of year class party, for instance.  But I also wanted to make a small gift for her kindergarten teacher as well as something for the after-school care staff.  These cookies seemed perfect.  The dough was easy to mix up, and included ginger, cinnamon and cardamom.  In my haste to get them made, I didn't actually chill the dough before shaping it into balls, but it seemed to work out okay.  I only made the one sheet of cookies I needed right away, and chilled the rest of the dough for later.  I portioned the dough with my handy #70 disher.  Rather than rolling the dough balls in regular sugar, I used turbinado sugar.  I baked the cookies for about 12 minutes, then let them rest on the pan for a few minutes before transferring them to a rack to cool.  While the cookies cooled, I mixed up the filling.  It was pretty simple--powdered sugar, cream cheese and lemon zest.  I matched cookies together as well as I could by size and sandwiched them together.  My #100 disher was perfect for the filling.

The verdict?  I don't actually know how the teachers liked them, since it was the last day of school.  When I finally had a chance to try one, I was a bit surprised at how soft the cookie part was.  But I liked the lemon and ginger together.  Jamie's reaction was pretty much the same as mine.  A few days later, I finally had the chance to bake the rest of the dough, so I took some cookies to work, too.  They seemed to be well received.  I can seem myself making these again, maybe playing around with the filling a bit.

If you're a subscriber to the Fine Cooking website, you can find the recipe here.  Or pick up a copy of the magazine, since it should still be available.  Extra incentive--there's a great ice cream article by David Lebovitz as well.  And be sure to check out the other Magazine Monday contributions on Ivonne's blog.

Puff the magic pastry

As I was reviewing last year, I was also thinking about things that I wanted to try in 2009.  I try to fit in as much baking as I can during the week and on weekends, but sometimes it's hard.  In fact, in October, I barely managed to  make my Tuesdays with Dorie and Daring Bakers recipes.  So it's always nice when I know I'm going to be on vacation, since it gives me a chance to try some new stuff.  In fact, I started my notebook (the one this blog is named after) during a week of vacation in May 2005.  Well, everything came together nicely, and over the past several days I've finally had a chance to make something that I've wanted to for quite a while. 

When I got my February/March issue of Fine Cooking, one article immediately caught my eye.  It was Croissants.  Laminated dough really used to scare me, until the June 2008 DB challenge when we made Danish Braids.  Even though I discovered then that it wasn't as hard as I thought, I still never got around to making anything else.  And then lately, I've been seeing croissants everywhere.  

I still managed to get a later start than I wanted, but it worked out okay.  The timeline in the Fine Cooking article has things spread out over three days.  On Friday, I mixed up the dough that would be wrapped around the butter.  It went into the fridge to develop flavor overnight.  Saturday morning, while Brianna and Gillian were occupying with cartoons and playing, I laminated the dough.  The recipe calls for three turns, but I actually did four.  The third one was particularly difficult for some reason--the dough really seemed to resist being rolled out.  So I waited a bit longer to do the last one, and it went better.  Once I was done, I wrapped everything up and stowed it back in the fridge until Sunday morning.

I was pretty surprised when I took the dough back out on Sunday, since it had risen quite a bit.  I cut it in half and carefully wrapped one half and put in in the freezer for later.  Then I rolled out the other half of the dough.  The dough rolled out nicely, which was really good, considering how sore my upper back was from Saturday's workout.  (It still hurts...)  I cut it as directed, ending up with 7 large triangles of dough and 2 small ones.  Most I rolled up as plain croissants, but I also wanted to make some chocolate filled ones.

Now I usually have plenty of chocolate on hand.  But I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to sample something new that I received recently.  At the end of December, I was lucky enough to qualify for a giveaway over at Blake Makes.  And a week or so ago I came home to find a small box containing my bar of Amano chocolate.  I saved a few squares to sample straight, and broke the rest into bars to put on three of my triangles of dough.

After letting the formed croissants rise for a couple hours, I baked them for a little less than 20 minutes.  The whole house smelled amazing.  The hardest part by far was waiting for them to cool long enough to avoid burning my tongue on molten chocolate.  

The verdict?  Oh, it was totally worth all the work.  The croissants tasted amazing!  It's good that I froze part of the dough.  It's bad enough that I made as many as I did, since I don't think they'll last very long.  I ate one of the chocolate ones for brunch (definitely too late to be called breakfast) and used another for my sandwich at lunch.  Gillian ate one of the small ones and really enjoyed it.  Brianna ate the middle out of hers and complained that she didn't like the crispy outside.  Crazy, I know.  But typical... =)  

I'm posting this as part of Magazine Mondays, and also submitting it to Yeastspotting.  If you're looking for a workout and want to give these croissants a try, you can find the recipe here. (It appears to be free for everyone at the moment.)

Change is good

Like most people, I'm usually somewhat resistant to change.  Don't fix what ain't broke, right?  So I was a bit apprehensive when I got my December/January issue of Fine Cooking, and read that they were planning some changes for the magazine and website.  I got busy with the holidays and forgot about it.  Then I opened my mailbox a week or two ago and pulled out the February/March issue.  It definitely looked a bit different, but good.  I've had time to read through the entire issue now, and I think I like it.  There are a number of things I want to try, including making croissants (one of the things I'd like to accomplish in 2009).  

I don't read magazines straight through.  I thumb through the whole thing when I get it, just to get an idea of what's in there.  But then I jump around, depending on what's most appealing and how much time I have at the moment.  So it took me a few days to get around to reading the article on oranges.  I like oranges, but don't really go out of my way to cook or bake with them.  For instance, much as I love chocolate, I'm not that big a fan of chocolate and orange together.  And for savory recipes, I love lemon, but never really thought about using oranges.  Then I saw the recipe for Blood Orange and Mango Sorbet.  Now that sounded really good.  

The recipe calls for juicing blood oranges and cutting up fresh mangos.  I took a couple shortcuts. =)  I needed 2 1/2 cups of the orange juice.  Fortunately, Anna over at Cookie Madness had a post about blood orange juice a few days ago.  I was able to find cartons of it at Central Market.  And for the mango, I actually used frozen mango chunks (12 ounces).  I pureed the mango pieces with the orange juice in my blender.  Then I heated a cup of the puree with a cup of sugar just until the sugar was dissolved, and mixed it back into the rest of the orange/mango mixture.  I added the tablespoon of lemon juice called for in the recipe, but didn't have any orange zest since I just bought juice.  And the great thing about using the frozen mango is that the mixture was quite cold, so I didn't have to wait for it to chill before churning it.  (Keeping a canister in the freezer all the time is great for spur of the moment frozen concoctions.)  

The verdict?  This one was a hit with everyone!  Brianna and Gillian loved it, and Jamie really liked it too.  I kept sampling it all afternoon. =)  The flavor is a great combination of sweet and tart--very refreshing.  And the color is lovely.  I'll definitely be making this sorbet again.

I'm also submitting this to Ivonne over at Cream Puffs in Venice for her Magazine Mondays event.  If you want to try this sorbet, you can access the original recipe here. (Right now, at least, it's available whether you subscribe to Fine Cooking's website or not.)