Milk Bar Baking

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baking, cookies, dessert, Milk Bar, Momofuku, NaBloPoMo, pie

Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook came out a while ago, but I never treated myself to a copy until a few months ago. Since then, whenever I have an occasion that calls for baking, I just want to try another recipe from it. If you’ve never baked from this book or even looked through it, the recipes aren’t necessarily difficult, but tend to be a combination of recipes.

For example, today I made a batch of the Chocolate-Chocolate cookies. After the ingredients for the dough, a half recipe of Chocolate Crumble is called for, so some looking ahead is required. Tosi also has very specific directions for creaming the butter and sugar for cookies on page 27, which she refers to in each recipe.

Chocolate-Chocolate Cookies

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Gevulde Speculaas!

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almond paste, almonds, baking, Dutch, pastry, speculaas, spices

Francijn of Koken in de Brouwerij was our January 2013 Daring Bakers’ Hostess and she challenged us to make the traditional Dutch pastry, Gevulde Speculaas from scratch! That includes making our own spice mix, almond paste and dough! Delicious!

Some people go on yo-yo diets while I seem to partake in yo-yo blogging.

It feels like a lot has happened in the past six weeks, but maybe not. Highlights include playing in a band, fracturing/healing a rib, acquiring a boyfriend, turning 31, and the realization that I have an obsession with donuts. D O N U T S .

In the meantime, I’ve been a bad blog mother, partially due to writer’s block, but mostly because of bad planning/time management/laziness.

It’s also been awhile since I last completed a Daring Bakers’ challenge, so the January challenge seemed like a good task for ending this slump. Let’s pretend that this wasn’t supposed to have been posted 8 days ago, shall we?

Movember: Chocolate ‘Stache Cookies!

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baking, cancer, chocolate, cookies, cut-out cookies, moustache, Movember, mustache, NaBloPoMo, soft cookies, stache

I still remember that day.

Five years ago, a friend and I were driving back to D.C. from an audition in Raleigh. Neither of us had advanced. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was shining brightly when I got a call from my mom.

“Honey, I have some bad news.”

Something inside me knew exactly what she was going to say.

“Your dad has cancer. We found out a few days ago, but I didn’t want to upset you before your audition.”

Joy and Cookies

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Austin, baking, brown butter, chocolate chip, cookies, Joy the Baker, NaBloPoMo

There’s this story that I’ve been meaning to tell you, but then it felt like the time had passed. But then when you’re blogging every day for a month, anything becomes game!

Five months ago, I met Joy the Baker. I met Joy the Baker! It’s kind of weird to get excited about meeting someone not even a whole year older than you, but I totally did.

How did this happen? She came to BookPeople for a book signing!

photo by BookPeople

Mocha Meringue Stars

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baking, chocolate, crunchy cookies, dairy-free, espresso, gluten-free, holiday, low-fat, meringues, mocha, NaBloPoMo, recipe

These meringues were initially a happy accident. I don’t remember if we had leftover egg whites or what, but my friend Jill and I decided to make meringues one night a couple years ago. A google search led to a Gourmet recipe for chocolate-dipped vanilla, chocolate, and espresso ones. We were sold!

The recipe was kind of tedious since it required making separate batches for each, but we went with it. Well, that is until we hit a road bump in the first (vanilla) batch. The mixer whisk wasn’t able to reach the one egg white due to the groove in the bowl. Nice one, KitchenAid! Obviously we had to think of something, and as lovers of mocha ice cream, we decided to combine ALL THE BATCHES. Not only did this solve the egg white issue, it sure made the recipe a whole lot simpler.

Back to Baking

Tags

baking, NaBloPoMo, ruts

Sometimes all it takes to get your baking mojo back are a few happenings, right? Or maybe that’s just me… Here’s what got me out of my rut at the end of October:

For a vegan bake sale I made Vegan Banana Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. I used this VegWeb recipe, but added dark chocolate chips and toasted walnuts. First time making them, and they were great! Sadly, I couldn’t go to the bake sale, but it was fun to contribute something.

Mary, a local blogger friend, had a pumpkin carving party/potluck and I brought Mochi Brownies. I’ve made them a few times and always like their dense chewiness. Weird issue this time: I store a lot of my baking and cooking ingredients in a large plastic container. My bag of mochiko was next to the spices and so these brownies had a hint of cumin, though maybe only to me…

Ah yes, and these were the Pumpkin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Halloween party. I seem to have a thing for cookies with oatmeal and chocolate chips… Also, these were my first foray into pumpkin this fall!

What’s your favorite thing to bake?

Toasted S’mores Treats

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baking, cereal, chocolate, easy, graham, marshmallows, recipe, s'mores, treats

I do realize that it’s technically fall and that most people probably associate s’mores with summer. However, have you been to south Texas in the summer? Come visit me then and we’ll see how you feel about toasting marshmallows around a fire when it’s still in the 90s at night. :) This is why I think of s’mores as more of a rest-of-the-year, AKA the Other Season, kind of treat.

I thought of these while in New York and unable to bake. Perhaps absence makes the mind grow cleverer? Evidently I have an issue with s’mores things that use un-toasted marshmallows (you should, too!), which is possibly how the idea came about.

Carrot Oatmeal Whoopie Pies with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

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baking, carrot, coconut, cream cheese, Easter, easy, oatmeal, recipes, soft cookies, whoopie pies

A little over a week ago, my roommates and I ate at a new restaurant not far from our East Side abode: Hillside Farmacy. As one may guess from the name, they use locally-sourced ingredients (except for, say, the oysters), which seems to be an excellent trend among Austin eateries. Oh, and speaking of trendy, so were the waitstaff along with most of the customers. I never feel cool enough in this town, especially during SXSW days.

During the brief wait for a table, we ogled what was housed in the bakery case. The presence of macarons will never not excite me, plus there were pastries, cupcakes, chocolates, mini tarts, and what looked to be carrot cake whoopie pies. These all come from local bakeries.

After our tasty sandwiches, Maddie and I decided to split a macaron (rose) because she had never had one, and one of the whoopie pies since they looked/sounded good and were recommended by the waitress. The tasty not-so-little cookie sandwich inspired me to make some myself!

Madeleine Trials

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baking, cardamom, coffee, French, lemon, madeleines

Less than a week ago, I had never even tried a madeleine. I have now eaten some absurd number thanks to Jill’s birthday last week. Since she loves the things, I decided to make her a batch and give her the pan. It’s kind of hard to justify buying one-purpose kitchen things for yourself, isn’t it?

Having never made madeleines, I turned to Emma’s blog, Of Agates and Madeleines, because if someone has the very specific thing that you want to make in their blog title, that might be a good place to start. She had made these pretty pumpkin spice madeleines a couple months ago (hey, she’s a string player, too!) and since she used Dorie Greenspan’s recipe as a base, I decided to use that as mine as well.

You know me…I have this tendency to want to make a recipe different even if I’ve never tried it before. Jill really likes coffee and cardamom (and coffee with cardamom), so I came up with that flavor combo pretty quickly. The only problem is that I didn’t really know how much coffee (brewed? ground? instant?) or cardamom to use. The closest recipe I could find for coffee madeleines was for mocha ones and since it used a tablespoon of finely ground espresso, I figured I’d do the same, but increase it by half. Also I started out with a teaspoon of ground cardamom and then added an extra quarter of it after sampling the batter. 

German Chocolate Brownies

Tags

baking, brownies, coconut, fudgy, German chocolate, pecans, recipes

You guys, I’m not doing so well on my list and have less than two months to go until the 20s escape me.  I’ve also been  staying at my parents’ house in San Antonio for the past few weeks which wasn’t expected, but is just temporary for work things, so at least I’m making money.

There are two small bits of good news which to me are pretty major.

1) Thanks to a tip from Mary, I have conquered the art of cutting disgustingly perfect brownies.  The freezer is where it’s at.

And 2), thanks to #16 on the list, I have succeeded in trying coconut things 10 times this year.

Guess what?  I actually like it now.   (p.s. goat cheese is at 8 and sushi is still at 0…that shiz is expensive!)