Blogs about recipes:
Frosting.
My mom said the frosting I put on those cupcakes was good, and so I promised I'd post the recipe for that too. Here goes:
- 1/2 pound cream cheese, room temp
- 1 stick unsalted butter, room temp
- 4 oz bittersweet baking chocolate, melted
- 1 pound powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
Start slowly and mix it all together, for about 7 minutes. This yielded more than enough frosting for my 2 dozen cupcakes, though I tend to frost lightly. (I've found that I can microwave the chocolate on low speed in a ramekin. This is much easier than fashioning a double boiler.)
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Chocolate Cupcakes.
I made more cupcakes this weekend. These were follow-on cupcakes to the batch that I made for the husband to take along while working with his 48 hour film festival team. (Alas, the film is not available on-line for a while yet.) My cupcakes were apparently much enjoyed by the film cast and crew; even though I substituted one cup of hot water for the coffee called for by the recipe.
Since I had a bunch of frosting left over, I decided to try the cupcakes again, this time with the coffee. The with-coffee cupcakes were better - noticeably larger and fluffier. Here is the recipe that I used, taken from Caprial's Desserts, by Caprial Pence and Melissa Carey.
- 12 ounces flour (that's 3 cups to some of you)
- 2 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 1/2 cups baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Whisk these.
- 1 1/3 cups vegetable oil
- 1/2 cups buttermilk
Mix these into the above, until well blended.
- 3 eggs
Mix into the above, one at at time.
- 1/2 cups freshly brewed hot coffee
- 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
Mix into the above; low speed.
For medium sized cupcakes, bake at 350° for about 20 minutes (use a toothpick). I got about 28 cupcakes out of this.
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Baking Lab: Cookie Customizations.
This blog continues on the topic of varying the gold standard chocolate chip cookie recipe to find a perfect variation for my tastes. I'm too sick to make any new cookies on my own this weekend, but I was able to watch T.V. and type. Here are Alton Brown's alterations on the basic recipe for different specific results - the thin and crispy chocolate chip cookie, the puffy and fluffy chocolate chip cookie, and the chewy chocolate chip cookie.
Thin & Crispy:
- Replace 1 egg w/ 2 oz whole milk.
- Replace some brown sugar with more white sugar.
- Stick with all butter for the fat.
- Stick with baking soda for the leavening agent. You could even increase the baking soda by up to half for extra crispy cookies.
You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip cookie here.
Puffy & Fluffy
- Use butter flavored shortening instead of butter.
- Use cake flour instead of all purpose flour.
- Use baking powder instead of baking soda.
- Add extra brown sugar.
- Chill the dough before scooping onto baking sheet.
You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Puffy and Fluffy Chocolate Chip cookie here.
Chewy
- Use bread flour instead of all purpose flour.
- Melt butter before adding the sugars.
- Replace almost all of the white sugar with brown sugar.
- Replace 1 egg with 1 yolk and 2 tablespoons whole milk.
- Chill the dough before scooping onto baking sheet.
You can find Alton Brown's complete recipe for the Chewey Chocolate Chip cookie here.
Note - Alton uses kosher salt and extra vanilla extract (1 1/2 teaspoons) in each of these recipes. The recipe variations listed here should work on any kind of cookies, not just chocolate chip.
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The Cake May Be A Lie, But the Cookies Are Not.
Saturday afternoon was very relaxing. The husband played Portal and we discovered just how much of a lie the cake was. I enjoyed watching as I made some cookies. I started with a tube of premade sugar cookie dough, pressed into mini-muffin pans and then baked. I then dusted the cookie-cups with powdered sugar, and spooned some microwaved jam into the cups. Then I melted some chocolate chips, scooped them into a platic baggie, cut off the corner of the baggie, and drizzled the chocolate on the cookies.
If you do these, be sure to spray the muffin pan with sprayable butter to grease it. I messed up a second batch tonight by forgetting to do that. Also be sure to press the dough all the way up the sides of muffin cups; leaving a very thin shell of dough at the bottom of the muffin cup. And wrap the jam microwaving bowl in some wax paper to prevent an exploding molten jam disaster.
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Cookies - Fin.
It occured to me that, after reading the cookie secrets, you might want an actual recipe for making cookies. I was going to tell you to use the recipe on the back of a bag of Hershey's Kisses, but it turns out I have already coded up the recipe for them. And here's one last bonus tip - buy shortening in easy stick form - measuring half a cup out of the large tub is just not worth the effort.
Peanut Blossoms (aka Brown Eyed Susans)
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup shortening
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- 48 milk chocolate candy kisses
Instructions
Heat oven to 375° F. In large bowl, whisk together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, brown sugar, baking soda and salt. In separate bowl, mix shortening, peanut butter, milk, vanilla and egg: blend at low speed until stiff dough forms. Shape into 1-inch balls; roll in sugar. Place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 375° F. for 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately top each cookie with a candy kiss, pressing down firmly so cookie cracks around edge; remove from cookie sheets. Cool completely.