Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are one of my favorite cookies to make. They’re soft and delicious. I’ve even had people who don’t like pumpkin like these cookies. It is not a Martha recipe. I actually got the recipe from Allrecipes.com. They are super simple to make too. The hardest thing was finding the pumpkin at this time of year. Apparently pumpkin is not in all stores year round? I had no idea, because I usually only make pumpkin things when pumpkin is in season, so I have no problem finding it. For some odd reason though, I have been craving them this February. I finally found a can at Reem’s grocery store (of all places), and was super excited!

I actually have a little movie of the process of baking these, because I had an art assignment due. I chose to take pictures of my sister, Val pretending to bake them for my project. Then she ate them all. J

Linzer Hearts

I found this recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and thought it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I made these cookies with my sister for a Valentine’s Day treat. I didn’t have time to spend hours making cute Valentines, so these cookies ended up being my Valentine to everyone who had one.

They are a very elegant, heart-shaped cookie filled with raspberry preserves. The dough is basically a hazelnut shortbread. The recipe definitely does not skimp on the butter, that’s for sure.

You have to grind the hazelnuts in the food processor in order to make the dough. I ended up almost making hazelnut butter, because I pulsed them for too long, no thanks to my sticky buttons on my processor. (I have since cleaned them.) It was crazy to see the consistency of dry nuts turn into almost a smooth oily butter. I almost would like to try making some sort of nut butter now just see the transformation again.

Fortunately I ended up having two different sizes of heart shaped cookie cutters for the bottom and top parts of the cookies. You could also use the middle mini hearts for just plain shortbread cookies, but I chose to just keep adding them back to the dough and making more sandwich cookies.

They are definitely a cookie looks as good as they taste. I was not disappointed in any way by these cookies, other than they are very time consuming. Though that’s to be expected, especially in baking!

Margarita Cake

I am sad to say that I did not get a picture of this cake! It was pretty too! It was a bundt cake with a glaze and green lime zest on top.

So this cake is inspired by the actual Margarita drink. The cake itself even contains tequila and triple sec, as does the glaze. I brought this to a fiesta I was going to and it went so fast I didn’t even have a chance to have a piece, but I heard it was good! I sprinkled the top with lime zest for a pretty green color and put a little bowl of salt to be sprinkled on top each slice if you so chose.

I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com again. I changed a couple things. It was kind of a cheating recipe. It called for a cake mix and instant pudding. I used a lemon cake mix instead of an orange cake mix like it called for. I couldn’t figure out why it called for an orange cake anyway, because it is a lemon-lime drink.

Also, when I made the glaze it was REALLY runny, so I would encourage to just add the liquid a little at a time, or just add more sugar.

Blackberry Cream Cheese Pastry

I made these up too. I used the Pate Choux recipe from Martha’s book, and was not impressed. I have a better and easier recipe of my own that I would have used, but it was online, and alas, no internet at home. I got the idea for these when I worked at Macey’s in Logan. They had these cream cheese raspberry Danishes that were amazing. Every morning that I worked at 6 am I would get one. They called them Danishes, but the dough was more like a cream puff dough than a Danish dough. So that’s what I used for mine, a cream puff “dough.” I put dough in quotes because really it’s not like a dough at all. It’s flour, butter, water and eggs, but it calls for so many eggs that It’s more of a creamy mixture than a hard dough. You actually put it into a frosting bag and pipe it onto a cookie sheet. I piped out little disks and then froze them for 15 minutes, before taking them out and adding a rim to the edge of the disks and then put them back in the freezer for 15 minutes.

For the cream cheese mixture, I used Neufchatel cheese, which is basically low-fat cream cheese, but I can’t taste the difference and it happened to be what was in my fridge. Plus, it’s softer than cream cheese and I thought that would be nice for the pastries. I warmed it just a bit and added a couple tablespoons of milk and sprinkled some sugar. Just to add a tiny bit of sweetness, but I knew that the blackberries would be sweet, so it would even out the tang of the cream cheese. I used blackberries instead of raspberries because I have a bunch in my freezer. I let them thaw and then mashed them with a spoon and sprinkled probably…. 3 tablespoons of sugar to a cup, cup and a half of blackberries.

I pulled out the frozen pastry disks and put a dot of cream cheese and a spoonful of blackberries. I only did this on half, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to be baked with the filling or have the pastry be baked and then add the filling after. So after baking them, I filled the other half. I decided I liked the ones with the non-baked filling. They are fresher tasting, but because you put it on while they are warm, the cream cheese still melts a little. They were quite delicious. J I think I would bake the pastries a little longer next time though until they are brown and somewhat crispy. They were much too soft for my taste. All in all I thought it was a fairly good recipe to be made up, and had very little sugar.

Challah Bread

In honor of being called Jewish-looking by my mother, I decided to bake Challah bread. First of all Challah is pronounced hall-uh, or if your Gwen Stefani… Holla. (No, I do NOT like Gwen Stefani.) Challah bread is typically made for the Sabbath and/or Jewish Holidays. If you want more info click here (though it is Wikipedia, so believe what you will.)

Ahhhh yeast! Yes, it does scare me. Every time I think I’ve going to either kill it, or it’s somehow going to grow at an alarming rate and become a huge gob of dough and take over my oven and then eventually my house. A little paranoid? No…

Despite my paranoia with yeast I made Challah bread. Now, this is a lesson to those of you who don’t read through your recipes all the way before you make them. I usually do, but for some reason on this particular recipe I did not. So..alas, I ended up putting an extra egg. It was supposed to be 8 egg yolks in the dough and a whole egg to brush on top. You guessed it. I put 8 yolks and a whole egg in my dough. I don’t think it changed it too much though.

I was surprised at how fast it ended up baking though. I let it rise for an hour in an oiled bowl until it doubled in size. Then I braided it. I tried to figure out how you braid it with 6 instead of 3, but I couldn’t figure it out for life of me, and living in an Amish house with no internet I couldn’t Google it. So I ended up braiding it just normally with 3. Then the recipe said to let it rise for another hour until doubled in size. But, it doubled in size in 20 minutes. So I ended baking it a lot sooner than I anticipated. I brushed another whole egg on top and put it in the oven. This also said that it would take 50-60 minutes. It was very dark brown at 40 minutes though. I was actually really lucky that I checked on it, because otherwise I would have had a very black loaf of Challah bread. Fortunately I did check it just in time. J

The thing that sucked the most though was that it stuck to my pan horribly. Even though I greased the whole pan and supposedly it is non-stick. So I lost almost the entire bottom of my loaf, but it was still good. It makes most excellent French toast. J

Brownies

For years I have sucked at making brownies. Even when using a mix they have ended up in disaster. It was not until this last year that I found a recipe that didn’t end up in a gooey glob of a mess in the end.

Surprisingly, this is a Martha recipe! I like them because they call for chocolate instead of cocoa making them a denser brownie. Plus, it doesn’t have that flakey crust, which I’ve found a lot of people like, but I hate it. Her recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, which usually ends up more expensive. I’ve found though that it’s just as easy and cheaper to user semi-sweet and not add as much sugar. I just use the semi-sweet chips, because they are cheap, but they also melt faster than buying a big block of chocolate.

It’s essential too to melt the chocolate with a double boiler. Yes, I know, it’s tempting to stick it in the microwave and just zap melt it. BUT I cannot tell you how many times that I’ve burned my chocolate this way. Just be patient and melt it the old fashioned way.

I also like to sprinkle my brownies with a mini-chocolate chips. It’s fun and cute.

BAGELS!

So yes, it’s been over a month since I’ve been blogging.  Not to say that I haven’t been baking though.  I just haven’t been blogging about my baking.  I am going to try and catch myself up with the recipes I’ve done.  On the plus side I am going to try to bake a lot more new things, because I am poor and can’t afford to buy them.  Like bagels! 

Yes, I made bagels.  I thought it would be a pain, but it really wasn’t.  PLUS, it made my house more humid because of the boiling water.  (My house is so dry it’s ridiculous!)  I took an online recipe from allrecipes.com, (awesome website!) and modified it.  White bagels that I made into whole-wheat bagels…of course, I know it’s not surprising.  At least this time they actually turned out good rather than my other recipes that haven’t.  Instead of 3 cups of white flour (which was actually supposed to be bread flour, but I only had all-purpose) I used 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, with ¾ cup of whole-wheat flour (this was all I had left L) ¼ cup of wheat bran, and a ¼ cup of wheat germ.  Surprisingly not too heavy, though I think they would have been better with more whole-wheat pastry flour, which is a bit lighter than normal wheat flour. 

One thing I thought was interesting was there was no fat in the recipe.  Is this normal?  Yes and no.  I looked up a few different recipes and some have a little and some have none.  After finishing my recipe, I think I would add a little oil or shortening to my next batch, because they were a little on the dry side.  Everything else in the recipe I followed, for the exception of making them mini bagels instead of full sized.  This recipe also said to make little balls, flatten them and make a hole in the middle with your finger.  No.  This is cheating.  You don’t make bagels this way!!  You roll out the dough in a rope shape and then twist the ends together to make a circle.  I guess if you make them the other way you wouldn’t have to worry about them coming undone.  I didn’t have this problem though.  Just make sure that when you twist the ends together that they are stuck well.

The boiling was the best part I think.  It’s also what makes a bagel, a bagel.  The boiling water is what creates that smooth chewy outside.  You only have to boil them for a minute before draining them on a paper towel and baking them.   Brush a little egg white on top to make them shinier and to stick on any toppings you would like.  I put sesame seeds on half of mine, because I don’t really like anything in my bagels, and sesame seeds were all that I had.  They puff up a little when you boil them and then a little more when you bake them, but still don’t end up much bigger than the size you make them.

I was okay with the end result.  They were a little on the heavy side as when as dry, so for next time I would use the pastry flour and add some fat to make them more moist.  I think it might also be fun to add some herbs and see how those turn out.