Whoopie Pies

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these, this is a sandwich cookie/cake concept that look kind of like oversized oreos. That’s where the resemblance stops. The cookie portion from here is like a cake (Chris thought the dough would make great cupcakes). The filling (from here is a fluffy vanilla frosting. I’ll repost the recipes here together.

Cookies
2 cups AP flour
1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 stick butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 large egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and sugar until light. Add egg and vanilla and continue mixing until light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the dry. Portion the dough out onto greased cookie sheets (the original recipe said 1/4 cup a cookie, but I think next time I’ll do closer to 2 tablespoons). Bake 11-13 minutes, until the cookie springs back when touched.

Filling
1 cup milk
1/4 cup AP flour
1 stick butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sugar

Mix milk and flour in a microwave safe bowl. MIcrowave, stirring occasionally, until the milk and flour turn into paste. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and shortening, and add the sugar. When the mixture is light and fluffy, add the vanilla. When the milk mixture is cooled, add it to the sugar mixture, and whip until combined.

When cookies are cooled, spoon some filling onto the flat side of a cookie, and sandwich with another cookie. Consume over a sink or large plate (this can be a messy process).

Low Sugar Chocolate Cake

I’ve made this cake several times for diabetic birthdays and celebrations. I’ve tried several low sugar cakes, and this is by far the best one I’ve tried.

Ingredients
1/2 cup canola oil
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups splenda
2 cups buttermilk
2 1/2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 cup hot water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix oil, egg and vanilla. Add sugar and splenda. In a seperate bowl, mix dry ingredients. In alternating additions, add buttermilk and dry ingredients, starting and ending with the dry goods. When the ingredients are incorporated, add the water and stir. Divide the batter into two prepped cake pans, and bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Great Peanut Butter Cookies

Chris is a huge fan of peanut butter cookies, but I’ve always been disappointed with the results from the traditional recipes. I poked around online until I found this ridiculously simple peanut butter cookie recipe.

Ingredients
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix ingredients. Roll into walnut sized balls and smash down with a fork. Bake for 13 minutes.

Peanut Butter Cookies-Fresh from the oven

We also did this with splenda and we both like it better. It was more cookie-like, better texture. For that, we only used 3/4 cups of splenda instead of the full cup of sugar. Baking time is the same.

Truffles, once more

For my last day working at the hospital, I decided to make a big batch of truffles for everyone. Nobody every said I was too bright. I followed the instructions of times past-using 60% dark chocolate chips for everything (hey, it was on sale). The flavors this time around were chocolate, coffee, raspberry, and mexican hot chocolate (vanilla, cassia cinnamon, and some cayenne and ancho). I used a mixture of coffee liqueur and strong brewed coffee for the coffee truffles, and I think in the future I’ll just use coffee. The raspberry had Chambord in it, and was quite nice. The ganache centers were quite soft, so I had to work pretty quickly. In future if I make them during the summer, I’ll make the ganache a little harder, as my hands tend to be warmer in the summer, unlike my perpetual handcicles in the winter months.

Clockwise from left, raspberry, mexican hot chocolate, coffee, chocolate.

They went over VERY well at work, and by the time my shift was over, there were only about a dozen left for the night shift.

The full batch

Low sugar chocolate chip cookie

Since both my mom, and Chris’ mom are diabetic, we’ve been trying some low and sugar free recipes. We’ve made a few recipes with varying levels of success, but I’ve found we have better results using the splenda for baking blends at half amounts. With this in mind, we pulled out one of our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, Alton Brown’s Chewy cookie recipe as a base.

Ingredients
2 sticks salted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tbsp splenda sugar blend for baking
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp splenda brown sugar blend for baking
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract (more or less-we always use more)
2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips (the higher cocoa, the better)

Method:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Melt butter, and once it’s cooled some, add the sugar blends and mix until smooth (it may take a while). Add the beaten egg and yolk to the mixture and stir in, along with the vanilla. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then add to the wet. Mix until mostly incorporated. Add the chocolate chips, and mix in. Portion onto parchment lined cookie sheets, and bake for 12-14 minutes, until golden on the edges.

One thing to mention is that cookies baked with splenda don’t spread as well as full sugar cookies, so you’ll want to smush the cookie down a little so you get a cookie shaped cookie, rather than a bombe shaped cookie.

They turned out well, a little more crumby than a typical cookie, but in the future, I may try AP or cake flour instead, just for giggles.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Frosting, redone

Recently for work, I threw together another vanilla cinnamon cake, but this time I altered the frosting recipe some. I used the standard Italian buttercream from the CIA’s baking book, at a half recipe and I still had a couple of cups of leftover frosting.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Buttercream
4 oz egg whites
8 oz sugar
2 oz water
1 lb butter (unsalted, and softened)
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
4.5 oz chocolate (mixed dark and white, to taste)
1 teaspoon ancho powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1.5 teaspoon cinnamon (as usual for this recipe, cassia is the way to go)

Melt 6 oz of the sugar with the water in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat, until it reaches soft-ball stage (240 degrees). Meanwhile, beat egg whites until frothy, then add remaining sugar and continue beating to medium peaks. When syrup reaches the target temperature, slowly pour into the egg whites, with mixer on medium speed. When all the syrup has been added, beat meringue on high until it returns to room temperature. Add butter in small batches, letting each addition blend in before adding more. When buttercream is smooth, blend in the chocolate, spices and vanilla. Use now, or refridgerate for later use.

Also: The dry nature of the cake has always been a bit of a problem, so I think next time instead of 4 whole eggs, I’ll use 2 whole eggs, and 4 egg yolks. Hopefully leaving the whites out will keep the cake more moist, and the increased fat from the yolks will help with the same thing.

Truffles: Take Two

This year, I decided to give the truffles another try. 12 months had softened the memories from last year of the 8 pounds of confections Chris and I made. As Christmas rolled around, family members started to ask if the truffles would return. I caved and ended up making a much more manageable 3 pounds of truffles. Although there were a few hiccups along the way, in the end, it was far less trouble than last year, and I think the results were better.

Centers

2 lbs dark chocolate (I used some 60% cocoa for the ganache)
3 cups heavy cream

Heat cream to boiling, pour over chocolate. Let sit for a few minutes, then stir until smooth. At this point, divide the ganache into however many flavors you’re going to want and add the liquors, spices and extracts. This year, I brought back the popular coffee, chocolate and raspberry from last time around, and also added a mexican hot chocolate flavor with vanilla, cinnamon and cayenne. From there, the procedure was much like the last time around . I did three coats of chocolate on all the truffles, and some needed more (it was about 20 oz of chocolate total for coating). The coating chocolate was a rich 72% cocoa. For decorating, I used an icing of powdered sugar and water, mixed with an appropriate flavor or color agent. The coffee was topped with some course ground coffee beans.

The overall reaction to this batch was very positive, and took about a quarter of the time as last years, while still making almost 100 truffles.

German Chocolate Cake

To finish up our feast of comfort food, we made a german chocolate cake. Now, Chris’ mom has been making these things for years for her work, and she was always troubled that her cake wasn’t as tall as she wanted it to be. She tried different flours, different pans, anything she could think of to make the cake as tall as she remembered it being. I had recently expanded our CIA collection to include the baking and pastry book as well as the garde manger book, and while flipping through the baking and pastry book, we stumbled upon a picture of properly creamed butter and sugar. The mixture was almost white, and looked like the consistency of cream cheese frosting. With this in mind, we followed the recipe on the box of German’s chocolate, being sure to cream the butter and sugar fully for once. It took a little longer than we expected with the Kitchenaid stand mixer, but after a few minutes on high, we got the nearly white, light and fluffy result we were looking for. We also used cake flour to ensure a soft, delicate crumb. The final result was a batter about the consistency of whipped cream, and the cooked cakes were about twice as tall as Chris’ parents had been getting. The cake texture was also amazingly soft and moist. In the future, we’re going to definitely be careful to fully cream the butter and sugar in creaming method recipes, because it really really does make a huge difference in the final result.

EDIT: Here are the pictures, as promised.

Layers, just depanned.

Finished Cake

The cake comes to its terrible end…

Truffles

This week, Chris and I decided to finally use the 5lb bar of chocolate his parents gave me last Christmas, so we made truffles. We followed the steps found in The Professional Chef . They turned out quite well, with only a few minor pitfalls on the way to chocolate goodness.

Before we get onto the recipe, a few quick words on equipment. This is an extremely equipment, time and space heavy process. I don’t recommend attempting it without at least two different sized double boilers, an instant read thermometer, disposable food-service grade gloves (vinyl or latex), several jelly roll trays, a roll of wax paper, and paper cups to put the finished truffles in. It also should be noted that this is an extremely messy process, so be prepared to find chocolate in unexpected places.

Now, on to the recipe. Since we had 5 pounds of milk chocolate available to us, we decided to just use that as the basis for ganache filling for the truffles. Ganache is simply a mixture of chocolate and heavy cream. Now, since I’m sometimes a bit slow, I forgot to adjust the bittersweet ganache recipe given in the Professional Chef to account for the difference in the milk chocolate. It turned out all right in the end, which brings me to an important point-this can be a very forgiving process. Chocolate and ganache can be melted back down with minimal fuss if something doesn’t quite work (so long as the chocolate hasn’t seized on you).

Milk Chocolate Ganache
1 pound of chocolate
1/2 cup of heavy cream

Note that this is approximate-your mileage may vary depending on the brand of chocolate you have. We used Hershey’s, as it’s what we had. It may take an extra tablespoon or so to smooth out the ganache, or it may take less. If the ganache is too soft, feel free to melt it down and add more chocolate-we certainly did. Just for completeness, here’s the dark chocolate ganache, if you prefer.

Dark Chocolate Ganache
1 pound of chocolate
1 cup heavy cream

Bring cream to a boil, and pour it over the chunks of chocolate. Stir until melted. We did this over a double boiler as well, with the heat on medium-low. Once the ganache is smooth, this is the time to add additional flavors. Since we had a great deal of chocolate to work with, we did four different kinds of truffles, chocolate, coffee, hazelnut and raspberry. To provide these flavors, we used liqueurs. We used 1-2 tablespoons of the liqueur to every pound of chocolate-but really it was based on taste. Once this was incorporated into the mixture, we let the ganache cool on the counter until room temperature before moving to the fridge. Once it was hardened, after several hours, we formed the truffle core. This is where the gloves first come in. To do this, we used a plastic teaspoon, and scooped a bit of ganache out, the closer to round, the better. Then we rolled the ganache with the finger tips of one hand on the palm of the other (for example, since I’m right handed, I have the ganache on my left palm, and used my right hand to roll it). Once rounded, the ganache was placed on a wax-paper lined tray. Once all the centers were formed, the chocolates were put back in the fridge for a bit to firm up again. At this point, there are a couple of different options. You can take the easy road, and dust the truffles with coco or powdered sugar and call them done, or you can take the hard, and messy road and coat the truffles with chocolate. Go-getters that we are, we opted for the messy road. For a coating, since the truffles had milk chocolate in the center, we used bittersweet chocolate (for this, we got Ghirardelli chips). For each pound of ganache, we used probably about 10 oz of coating chocolate, but your mileage may vary as well. To melt and temper the chocolate, I used the seed method (again, also in the Professional Chef). I know there are other methods, and some people skip the tempering entirely, but I didn’t really want to tempt fate, so I tried to play by the rules. Using a double boiler over medium low heat, I melted most of the chocolate, reserving 1-2 oz. Once the instant-read thermometer hit 113 degrees (F), I took the top of the boiler off the heat, and dumped in the rest of the chocolate, stirring constantly. Be careful not to get any water into the chocolate too, otherwise it will seize. The residual heat melted the chocolate, and once the thermometer hit 90 degrees, it was time to start coating (I know that 88 is actually desired, but this worked out all right for me, so I’m not going to stress over it too much). This is also the point at which you really need a friend there to help out, because it’s going to get messy. If you’re right handed like me, you’re probably going to want to work left to right, so you’ll have your truffles on the left, chocolate in the middle, and new tray with clean wax paper on it on your right. Here is another point at which gloves are invaluable. To coat the truffles, I put a spoon full of chocolate in my left palm, and using a similar motion as I did when forming the truffles, I rolled the ganache in the chocolate until coated. Another note here-you’re going to be dripping chocolate, so be sure to start filling the new tray at the most distant point, and working toward you. This process will take awhile, so to keep the chocolate at the right temperature, there are a couple of options. Many people recommend heating pads, but since we couldn’t find one, we just set the top of the double boiler back in to the bottom, which still had some residual warmth left. Once everything has its first coat on, let them sit at room temperature until hard, then repeat, adding another layer of chocolate. I recommended three total layers of chocolate, it gives it a nice shell and wonderful crunch when you bite into it. As you put on the final layer, if you want to top any with chopped nuts, simply sprinkle them over the still wet truffle. If you want to decorate with other shades of melted chocolate (we used both white chocolate and a mixture of white and dark), simply drizzle or pipe the decorative chocolate over the finished and hardened truffle as desired.

The end result was (8lbs worth of) almost professional looking truffles, that tasted simply amazing. Although I never intend to make truffles in these quantities ever again, it’s definitely something that’s fun to do, and pretty seriously impressive.

Butterscotch Pie

In addition to breads, we also made a butterscotch pie that tasted wonderful. While there was a slight structural problem the first day, we think some additional flour next time around should fix it. Also, we made a deep dish pie, and so used a double recipe, which contributed to the structural instability. This recipe came from the Gourmet magazine cookbook from a number of years ago.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
4 egg yolks
5 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cup warmed milk
2 tsp vanilla

Mix the butter and brown sugar in a bowl over a double boiler over low heat until well blended. Mix the flour, egg yolks and milk in a bowl, and add this slowly to the sugar mixture, stirring constantly. Let cook gently until thickened, as thick or slightly thicker than pudding. Pour into a crust that has been blind baked and cooled, and then chill until set. If desired, it can be topped with a meringue or whipped cream (we opted for the latter). This was also a big hit, despite not being entirely set.