Maple Lime Pecan Cookies

With all the chaos from moving back to the west coast, my blogging has obviously been severely neglected. It also seems that since I’m living in someone else’s house for 6 weeks or so, I shant be baking for a while. This is where I cry myself to sleep every night. In truth, I probably won’t have time for it anyway, given the whole new job thing and it’s associated time-consuming activities – like having to think before putting clothes on in the morning. Drag!

In light of this, I’ll spend today’s entry talking about the things I made last week. [Oh and of course, I forgot to take photos of this next cookie, so I’ll throw in pictures of the banana bread for the sake of looks.] Let us take, for instance, another Experiment In Terror – Maple Lime Pecan Cookies. When I told my little sister about my ambition to replicate the flavor of the sample I tried at the new neighborhood Whole Foods’ Nut Counter, she replied, “That sounds … not delicious.” And I suppose if I hadn’t tried the sample myself, I would’ve said the same thing.

Fortunately, I ignored her protests and ventured onward. And behold! I ended up with a delicious butter cookie flavored distinctly with pecans and maple candy bits in the dough and a – forgive my use of this word – zingy lime glaze on top. Without the glaze, the product was just another butter pecan cookie. With it, however, the cookie danced delicately on the line that separates “wow I never would’ve thought of this combination, but it’s really tasty” and “wow I would never have put these flavors together – with good reason.” Luckily for me, it ended on the latter side. So thank you, Whole Foods, intimidating grocery store extraordinaire, for a free sample of some inspiration. This is only further proof that free samples, not gravity, make the world go ’round.

Notes:
- The ingredient list is split into two parts, one for the cookie itself, one for the glaze.
- This recipe requires chilling the dough! Plan on baking them the next day or at least 3 hours after letting them reside in the fridge.

Maple Lime Pecan Cookies
Adapted from Alice Medrich’s Butter Cookie recipe in her book, Cookies And Brownies

Cookie Ingredients:
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar (I used extrafine)
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour (I used unbleached)
zest of 2.5 limes
juice of 1 whole lime
1/3 cup crushed maple candy, chopped into small bits*
~3/4 cup whole pecans (measured while whole), chopped into small bits

*This can be found at Whole Foods, in the baking aisle. I encourage you to experiment with other ways to get the maple flavor into the cookie – let me know if you have any ideas!

Glaze Ingredients:
juice of 2 limes
~2 tsp sugar

1. Cream butter until smooth using wooden spoon
2. Using fingers, rub the lime zest into the sugar in a small bowl, making sure to bring out the juices in the zest
3. Cream butter, sugar, salt, zest, and vanilla until smooth and creamy but not fluffy, using a wooden spoon.
4. Add [1 lime’s worth of] lime juice and stir until completely incorporated.
5. In a separate bowl, sift flour using a wire whisk. Add maple bits and pecan pieces, and sift further using the whisk.
6. In 3 parts, slowly combine the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, until just incorporated. This may take a bit of effort (it did for me!).
7. Knead the dough a couple times to make sure it's smooth.
8. Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a round log, 2 inches in diameter. Wrap each separately in plastic wrap. Chill for at least 3 hours.
-- When you’re soon going to be ready to bake --
9. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake 12 to 14 minutes, or until light golden brown at the edges, rotating the cookie sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking time to ensure even baking. (I skipped that step and had no problems)
-- While the cookies are in the oven --
i. Heat the lime juice and sugar in a small saucepan over low-medium heat.
ii. Stir the sugar into the lime juice using a rubber spatula, and cook until the sugar is completely dissolved.
iii. Set aside a small pastry brush.
10. Once you’ve removed the cookies from the oven, let them firm up on the pan for about 1 minute before transferring them to a rack. As they’re cooling, use the pastry brush to apply the glaze liberally to the top of each cookie.
11. Completely cool before stacking or storing. May be stored airtight for several days, but they’re best 3-4 days after baking.

Baking blog backlog

I seem to have developed a backlog of items I baked but have yet to write about. First, I tackled some coconut cupcakes (whose recipe is not mine to give, but I am including pictures anyway). Second, I finally took a stab at Pierre Hermé’s Korova Cookies, a sort of a French chocolate shortbread. Dorrie Greenspan calls them World Peace Cookies in her book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, but since it confuses me to have names that don’t describe the baked good itself, we’ll call them Chocolate Sablés. Third, because I was supposed to be at home all day yesterday packing my things to ready for this weekend’s move … I baked Nutella Cupcakes.

Because I did not create this recipe, I feel absolutely no shame in saying that the Chocolate Sablés are perhaps the most delicious chocolate cookie you will ever eat. They have an intense chocolate flavor due to the cocoa powder, augmented by the use of chopped bittersweet chocolate. Dorrie Greenspan notes in her book that the cookies are “salty,” but it’s hard to think of them that way when you’re eating them. They’re just a perfect chocolate cookie with the added complexity of the grainy, surprising, but entirely complimentary salt.

Note: I used fine sea salt because I lacked the mysterious fleur de sel, and I can’t even think of how they could improve using the original ingredient. Dorrie indicates in her book that this is a fine substitution – just reduce the salt to ¼ tsp rather than ½ tsp fleur de sel.

You can find the recipe (along with beautiful photos) here. Just remember when you're slicing the chilled dough that it will probably fall apart (it's supposed to do that) and that all you have to do is, for lack of a better word, squish the broken bits back together and all will be well once they've baked.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this “self-frosting” nutella cupcake recipe a few days ago and have been preoccupied with it ever since. I made a few slight changes to the recipe, as I thought it could do with the addition of instant espresso powder and an increase in vanilla. After all, any recipe with less than 1 tsp of vanilla extract makes me nervous.

The end product was not quite what I expected, mainly because the Nutella doesn't really seem very frosting-like at all (so the original "Self-Frosting" description misled me!). I liked them, but my only qualm was that the top half of the cupcake was much tastier than the bottom half – as the bottom half lacked nutella – and as a result, the experience was much more muffin-like than intended. However, the cupcake still tasted great, particularly when enjoyed with coffee.

Nutella Cupcakes Adapted from Baking Bites

10 tbsp (140 grams) butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups (200 grams) sifted all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp instant espresso powder
2 tsp baking powder
Nutella, approx. 1/3 cup

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 325F. Line 12 muffin tins with paper liners.
2. Cream together butter and sugar until light, using a wooden spoon or a hand mixer. If using an electric mixer, beat for ~ 2 minutes.
3. Add in eggs one at a time, mixing after each until fully incorporated. Don’t worry if the batter doesn’t look smooth.
4. Add vanilla and mix until incorporated.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, espresso powder, and salt.
6. Stir dry mixture into the wet mixture using a wooden spoon until batter is uniform and no flour remains.
7. Distribute the batter evenly between the 12 cups using two spoons.
[Note: the Baking Bites version of this recipe says each liner should be ¾ full, but I could only fill mine slightly more than ½.]
8. Top each cake with 1 ½ tsp Nutella. Swirl Nutella in with a toothpick, making sure to fold a bit of batter up over the Nutella.
9. Bake for 20 minutes.
10. Remove and place on a wire rack to cool completely.
-- Makes 12 cupcakes --

Lemon Curd Cake

My family thrives on having certain core rules to guide our daily lives, both for big decisions and little ones. When I went with my mom to the grocery store, she told me to remember her three key attributes for an acceptable olive oil: Extra Virgin, First Cold Pressing, from Italy. When I got old enough to begin buying more fashionable clothes, my dad taught me about the Godzilla Rule: Make sure all your shoes are comfortable enough to run in, just in case Godzilla comes to town and you find yourself being chased by a giant fire-breathing lizard. (Note: Most women I meet do not follow the Godzilla rule -- man, will THEY be sorry when he shows up!)

Perhaps the most simple and yet frequently repeated rule was my dad's project mantra: Always make a mock-up. I can't think of one school assignment where I wasn't forced to draw up a draft or create a model of whatever it was I was planning to make. I was never very good with the mock-ups. After all, why devote time and energy to something that won't end up as your final product? But it turns out, the time you devote to thinking through your mock-up serves to make your final product better. Perhaps this would've given me clarity when I made my 5th grade state "float" (a Southern California tradition where kids decorate shoe boxes with tissue paper to mimic those of the annual Pasadena Rose Parade) and chose a large maple leaf made out of maple sugar as the centerpiece -- maybe then my float wouldn't have melted under the hot California sun.

It was with that singularly pathetic memory in mind that I decided to make a "test cake" in preparation for the one I was making for my sister's birthday. I used a lemon recipe from Cupcake Bakeshop and decided to add even more lemon and throw in some store-bought curd. You can find instructions for making your own lemon curd here, but I couldn't make the time to do that. You'll also notice that I divided the instructions into sections according to the overall function they play in the recipe. I hate long instructional blocks of text.

The result: A smooth, lemony cake that resembles a pound cake. Not for the faint-of-lemon-hearted. The lemon curd adds an extra touch of moisture and tang and pure lemon flavor that contrasts the cake nicely. I additionally made a glaze from lemon juice and sugar and painted the cooling cake with it so it could sit overnight and soak in. When served with fresh sliced strawberries on top, this made for a nice summery dessert.

Lemon Curd Cake
Adapted from Cupcake Bakeshop
Makes 1 8"-round cake

For the cake:
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
zest of one lemon

For the glaze:
1/3 cup lemon juice
3 TBS sugar

- Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F -
- Butter and flour 1 8-inch round cake pan. Set aside.

Assembling the batter
1. Using a standing mixer or a hand mixer, cream butter and sugar in a large bowl, until fluffy. [A wooden spoon may work here, but I get the feeling the electric mixer is key in aerating the cake. Though I might be wrong.]
2. Add eggs one at a time, beating each until fully incorporated.
3. In a medium bowl, use a whisk or a fork to combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. In a large measuring cup or small bowl, combine milk and vanilla (you may stir with a spoon if you like, but no implement is really required here)
5. Alternately add dry ingredients and wet ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Mix in with wooden spoon until just combined.
6. Mix in lemon juice and lemon zest (a wooden spoon works fine for this step as well).
7. Using a rubber spatula, transfer the batter from the bowl to the cake pan.

Baking the cake
8. Bake for ~30 minutes initially and check on your cake. It probably will still be liquid-like in the cake's top-middle region. Continue to bake for 3-5 minutes at a time, depending on how your cake smells, for a total of approximately 40-45 minutes (or perhaps even longer if necessary). If your kitchen begins to smell buttery and lemony, your cake is probably pretty close to done. If there's no cake smell, chances are it's probably still batter and not yet cake.
9. Once your cake has been in the oven for ~30 minutes, it's time to make the glaze.
a. Combine the lemon juice and sugar over medium-low heat in a small saucepan
b. Stir the sugar into the lemon juice and continue to cook until the sugar is entirely dissolved into the lemon juice. Make sure the lemon juice boils gently, so as not to burn the sugar before it's entirely mixed in.
10. Remove cake from oven when a thin knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Make sure to insert the knife deep enough -- you don't want to remove the cake if it's still raw in the middle. Your cake will be domed instead of flat on top -- this is what you want.

Applying the glaze
11. Let the cake cool in the pan for ~3-5 minutes on a cooling rack. Then, use a clean kitchen towel to help you remove the cake from the pan. You can do this by holding the cake pan (with an oven mitt) in one hand and the towel in the other. Place the towel on top of the cake and place your empty hand on it. Carefully flip your hands over so that the hand with the towel now is also supporting the weight of the cake from the pan. Toss the pan aside and use the rest of the towel and your now free hand to flip the cake back right-side-up and onto the cooling rack.
12. Using a pastry brush, apply the lemon glaze to the top, sides, and bottom of the cake. Let cool until room temperature.
13. Wrap cake tightly in plastic wrap and keep at room temperature overnight, or for a few hours to let the glaze sink in.

Assembling the cake
14. Unwrap the cake and use a serrated knife to make 3 radial cuts in the cake, producing 4 thin layers.
15. Carefully separate the layers and use a butter knife to apply a generous layer of lemon curd to each layer. Reassemble the cake as best you can. Serve with fresh strawberries if you like.

Scones! Wait, Scones?!

I tend to characterize baked goods not only by the way they taste, but how I feel they express their personalities. I suppose it's stereotypical of me, but I tend to divide them in my mind first by category, and then by individual variety. For example, cookies are down-to-earth, good with children, and accepting of all -- milk, tea, hot chocolate, and coffee. Layered cakes are much fancier and self-absorbed, only showing up on special occasions when they surface like wealthy hermits at annual social events only to disappear back into obscurity afterwards (though the exception to this rule is Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting, who always makes others feel welcome). Store-bought bread has an inferiority complex, cupcakes think very highly of themselves, and muffins are stealth desserts disguised as breakfast.

When you're younger, you can see these distinctions pretty clearly. There's a whole set of "grown-up" baked goods that display much pricklier dispositions. Biscotti hurts to bite into and makes you thirsty (seemingly on purpose -- jerk). Restaurant breads are often filled with seeds that make you feel much more like Big Bird than you would've ever wanted. Croissants feel light when you eat them, but then people tell you that eating them will make you fat. And then there's the scone.

The scone is perhaps the greatest deceiver of them all. It's not very sweet, not very soft, not very moist, and yet resembles an enormous craggly cookie that has "I promise I'm fun-tasting" written all over it. Many are filled with what look like mini chocolate chips, but alas! They're actually the estranged cousins of raisins known as Currants. And when you have a mouth full of them when you thought you were about to experience a world of chocolatey goodness, instead you feel as though someone just sunk your Battleship.

Of course, when you get older, you find that currants are actually pretty tasty, seeded breads go well with meals, and biscotti can only be fully enjoyed with a cup of hot coffee. And yet, I often find that even with my more food-enlightened older self, many scones are still as dry and deceiving as I remember them to be. But not these.

These are adapted from the Cheese Board book, and they are some of the best scones I've ever had. Flavorful, moist, and rich but not uncomfortably heavy, these can be paired with coffee like traditional scones, but I enjoy them plain. The only reason I resorted to scones in the first place is because I had both buttermilk and heavy cream leftover from an earlier project -- and I hate that they spoil so quickly. After trying these, I plan to have a lot of "leftover" buttermilk and heavy cream around from hereon out. Oh and in regards to the source of this recipe, it is my hope you will try this one and immediately go out and purchase a copy of the book, as there are numerous other amazing recipes to try.

Notes:

- Make sure to use unbleached flour -- I didn't have any at the time, and I'm convinced it was this substitution that made them much harder to assemble when placing them on the baking sheet.
- I increased the amount of chocolate chips called for in the recipe, which improved them significantly in my mind. The dough-to-chip recipe is key.
- If you're feeling adventurous, I might add 1/4-1/2 tsp of cinnamon, though the plain buttery taste is great on its own.
- You may want to check on and rotate your scones (remove the pan briefly and turn it around) after about 15 minutes of baking. I know my oven doesn't bake as evenly as I'd like, so it makes it harder to get them to an equal degree of done-ness.
- The second time I made these, I made less of an effort to get all the flour into the scones -- having some left in the bowl actually seemed to benefit the final product.


The Cheese Board's Chocolate Chip Scones

3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
3/4 cup heavy cream
3/4 cup buttermilk -- SHAKE WELL prior to using

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.

1. Combine flour, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl using a wire whisk.
2. Using a wooden spoon, stir salt and sugar into the dry ingredient mixture.
3. Cut the butter into the flour mixture using sharp knives or a pastry cutter, until the size of small peas (they need not be entirely uniform). 4. Use your wooden spoon to mix in the chocolate chips.
5. Using a cup or a spoon, form a large well in the middle of the mixture. Add the buttermilk and heavy cream to the well.
6. Mix until just combined (there will be some flour left at the bottom of the bowl).
7. Use a spoon and your hands to form rough balls of dough, approximately 2.25 inches in diameter (I just judged them to be a large handful) and place on the parchment papered baking sheets, a few inches apart. Do not smooth the surfaces of the scones -- they should be somewhat lumpy.
8. Sprinkle sugar as desired over each scone -- make sure not to get too much sugar on the pan, as it will caramelize and eventually burn if not on a scone.
9. Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until the scones are golden brown. Remove from the baking sheets with a spatula and let them cool on wire racks.

Yield: ~ 10 - 12 scones