melting your mouth

This is my mom’s recipe for pecan toffee, which she thinks came from Better Homes and Gardens several years ago. It’s another one of those things that’s special because we only make it at Christmas. Like the Date Rock Cookies, I’m not putting a picture, but they’re on the platter with the Nutty Fingers on that post.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 c chopped pecans, divided
1 c sugar
1 c butter, softened
1/3 c water
5 1.55 ounce milk or dark chocolate bars, chopped into small pieces (I prefer dark. And of course, the better the chocolate you use, the better the toffee)

Special Equipment:

Candy thermometer

Line a 15″x10″ jellyroll pan with heavy duty aluminum foil.l Lightly grease the foil. Sprinkle 1 c of the chopped pecans to within 1″ of the edge.

Bring sugar, butter, and 1/3 c water to a boil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly about 12 minutes, or until a candy thermometer reads 300 degrees. This is the “hard crack stage.” You can also check this by dropping a few threads of the candy into a glass of ice water to cool. The threads should then crack when you bend them rather than stretching.

Pour over pecans. Quickly sprinkle with chocolate pieces (so they melt). Let stand 30 s. sprinkle with remaining 1/2 c of pecans. Chill 30 minutes (or until hard) and then break up the toffee into bite size pieces. Store in an airtight container.

So in case you haven’t noticed, I’m on a baking kick lately. Last weekend seemed like a good time to make some cookies. I made three kinds: Heidi’s Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies, Espresso-Toffee Shortbread Cookies, from Dorie Greenspan via Smitten Kitchen, and Madeleines. Below are a few more details about how the cookies turned out, and the recipe for the madeleines (the other two recipes you can get from the links above).

Minty Chocolate Christmas Cookies

These have a short, crunchy chocolate cookie with a peppermint filling. I made the cookies pretty much as directed in the recipe, except I used baking sugar instead of powdered sugar, and white flour. For the filling, I used half powdered sugar and half baking sugar (I ran out of powdered). I didn’t want to use cream since I was giving them as gifts and thought they might be around for a few days, but I didn’t really want to just add water. So I creamed the sugar with a few tablespoons of butter to make a buttercream type frosting, and then added enough water to get the consistency right before adding the peppermint extract.

The cookies were very good, and I liked the balance of the rich, dark cookie with the mint frosting. However, they got soft very quickly (the next day). So, if you’re going to try them, I would recommend not filling them until just before serving, which I feel silly for not having thought of in the first place.

Espresso-Toffee Shortbread Cookies

In Deb of Smitten Kitchen’s post about these, she suggested substituting chopped Ghiradelli Toffee Interlude bar instead of the chocolate. I did this, and it was good, but I honestly am not sure the toffee added all that much; it mostly just tasted like chocolate chips, maybe because the coffee flavor covered it up? I also used very strong espresso instead of instant espresso powder because I didn’t want to buy any. They were good, but I think the coffee flavor would’ve been good if it had been a bit more pronounced. Overall, these are delicious and I will definitely make them (or some variation) again. Also, the rolling the dough out in a bag trick is a really great idea.

Madeleines

I make madeleines with a slightly adapted version of the recipe that came with my madeleine pan, which in turn came from Williams-Sonoma. As you can see in the photo, I use a metal non-stick pan, and it works very well. I know some people like these new-fangled silicone molds. After my recent experience trying silicone muffin tins, as well as several too many headaches from silicone swim caps, I’ve decided to try to avoid silicone if at all possible (though I realize computers make it a little hard to escape). Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

5 T unsalted butter
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 t baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 egg
Grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1 t vanilla (or orange-flower water)
1/3 c granulated sugar

Special equipment:

Madeleine pan (to make one dozen regular sized madeleines)

Instructions:

1. Melt the butter. Brush a little in the mold of the madeleine pan. Place pan in the freezer. Reserve remaining butter.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.
3. Lightly beat together the egg, lemon zest, vanilla, and sugar.
4. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture and beat until well combined. Beat in remaining butter just long enough to incorporate.
5. Refrigerate batter for about an hour. (This is probably not absolutely necessary, but I’ve read that it helps get the characteristic madeleine “hump.”)
6. Preheat oven to 375 F. Fill molds half full with batter.
7. Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until the tops are golden and the edges start to brown. Unmold onto a wire rack. (Better to put the shell side down; the tops may get dents in them from the wire rack.)
8. If desired, dust with powdered sugar. (I usually don’t.)

Growing up I often asked for a Red Velvet cake for my birthday. One year I remember mom making a version with pepperming icing, with a recipe I think came from Southern Living. I decided to try something like that on my birthday this year, but in miniature form. I made these cupcakes for the “Biochemistry Bake-Off” at work. I didn’t win anything, but I still had fun making them and they turned out pretty well — or at least half of them did. I baked half of them in new silicone muffin tins, and those collapsed to about half the size and pulled away from the edges as soon as I took them out of the oven. So I’m not using silicone muffin tins again! The other ones turned out pretty nicely though. I made a peppermint cream cheese frosting and garnished some of them with grated chocolate and crushed candy canes, and the others with a little bit of chopped peppermint bark I still had left from earlier in the week.

Red Velvet Cake:

1 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 eggs (room temperature)
1 T cocoa
1 T vinegar
2 1/2 c cake flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1 c buttermilk
1 t vanilla
1 oz red food coloring

1. Cream butter and sugar.
2. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.
3. Add cocoa to vinegar, and add to creamed mixture.
4. Sift remaining dry ingredients and gradually add to batter.
5. Add buttermilk, vanilla, and food coloring.
6. Bake in cupcake wrappers (makes a little more than 2 dozen) or bake in three greased and floured 9″ round cake pans, either way at 350 F for 25 minutes.
7. Let cool completely before icing.

Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting:

1/2 package of cream cheese (4 oz) (softened)
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 1-lb. box of powdered sugar
1 t peppermint extract

1. Beat cream cheese and butter.
2. Gradually add sugar, beating until smooth.
3. Add extract and beat until blended.

Ice cupcakes with the peppermint cream cheese frosting. Garnish with grated chocolate and crushed peppermint candy canes, if desired.

As I said before, I’ve been dying to make peppermint bark cookies, inspired by 101cookbooks. I’m also continuing to search for the perfect double chocolate cookie. These Double-Chocolate Espresso Cookies from Cheryl St. John’s blog seemed worth trying, so I made them with chopped peppermint bark instead of the chocolate chips (the ones added whole; I still used semisweet for the ones melted at the beginning of the recipe). I also used 1 tsp of espresso instead of 1 T of instant coffee, since I didn’t want to buy instant coffee.

They turned out pretty well. The cookies are pretty chewy and brownie like, and very rich. They were delicious, but I’m still going for something chewy in the middle like that but a little crispy on the edges and top. Also, I wanted them to be a little bit more peppermint-y. Next time I’ll add a few drops of peppermint extract. I garnished them with little bits of chopped peppermint bark, but they were too small, so they don’t really give a hint to the cookie’s contents like I wanted. Next time, I’ll reserve some of the peppermint bark and press in a few larger pieces into each cookie before baking. The peppermint bark is a little unusual in a cookie, and I liked the way it turned out a lot. The candy cane pieces add a pleasant chewy-crunch, adding more texture than a normal cookie. These are definitely something I will make again.

Matt and I bought a Christmas tree this weekend, and I decorated it last night, so I seem to have gotten in my holiday mood early this year. So of course I wanted to bake something festive. Inspired by an old recipe from Heidi of 101cookbooks, I decided to make some chocolate peppermint bark cookies. Not wanting to pay $20 a pound for peppermint bark, I first had to make my own. Here’s my “recipe”, though you can barely call it that. Next time, I think I’ll change the ratio to have a little more semisweet chocolate than white, and add a few drops of peppermint extract to the white chocolate.

Ingredients:
12 oz semisweet chocolate
12 oz white chocolate chips
6 peppermint candy canes or about 25 (I’m guessing) peppermint candies

Instructions:

First line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper.

Melt the semisweet chocolate. I used a double boiler, but mostly just because I wanted to take a picture of something melting that hopefully will eventually be added to the header here. The microwave (on low heat) would work fine too. Spread the melted chocolate in the jelly roll pan. I didn’t want it too thin, so mine just covered about 3/4 of the bottom of the pan. Place in the fridge to harden. I left it in the fridge for about 15 minutes, and it felt hard, but kind of made a mess in the next step, so I’d probably recommend leaving it at least 25 minutes or so, so it can get really cold. It might even be good to put it in the freezer at the end for a couple minutes, though not long enough to really get frozen or the chocolate might get that white film on it that frozen chocolate gets.

While you’re waiting for the semisweet chocolate to harden, crush the candy canes. I didn’t find a great way to do this — they poked holes in my plastic bag when I tried to crush them in a bag, so then I tried the food processor which grated the already small pieces really small but didn’t do much for the big ones. Overall, I think a heavy duty plastic bag is probably the best option, and next time I’ll probably use the smaller peppermint candies instead of candy canes. Then melt the white chocolate. Spread the white chocolate on top of the semisweet chocolate. This is where I got into trouble — the white chocolate melted the semisweet, so they got a little swirled together when I tried to spread it. You can’t really tell with the peppermint pieces on top though, and it doesn’t much matter anyway.

While the white chocolate is still hot, sprinkle the peppermint pieces over the top. I then used a piece of parchment paper to very gently press in the peppermint pieces. Put back in the fridge. When good and hard, break into pieces.

We’ll see tomorrow how the cookies go!