Penney’s Palate

Here it goes, my first Daring Bakers Challenge:

All was going well until the cake was in the oven for 45 minutes (the suggested baking time stated in the recipe). It was still very jiggly and far from “slightly golden”. 10 more minutes of baking and it was still jiggly and not even slightly golden. 10 more minutes, it seemed to be getting firmer, but no signs of goldenness. Five more minutes and it was slightly golden and firm. DONE. So that was a total of 70 minutes of baking. 25 minutes more than the recipe stated. I double checked the temperature of my oven, and the temperature that it was supposed to be set at. The temperatures matched.

Once the cheesecake was room temperature, I put it in the fridge to stay overnight. The next day when I began to scoop them out, I got my scale ready to measure the 2 oz rounds specified in the recipe. 2 oz. of cheesecake was A LOT bigger than I was expecting. I was thinking bite size, golf ball size, maybe even walnut size… Not the case. I switched from a small spoon to an ice cream scooper and forged on, measuring my 2 oz. cheesecake rounds. The cheesecake wasn’t very firm, so it was impossible to shape into round balls. Instead I got deformed round balls that were far from smooth. More like globs. I even tried to refrigerate the cheesecake blobs before shaping them, but that didn’t work. Next, I had to clean out our freezer to make room for 3 pans of cheesecake globs.

After a few hours of freezer time, it was time for the final part: CHOCOLATE! I had 1 pound of bittersweet chocolate and about a pound of semi-sweet and milk chocolate combined. I started with the bittersweet chocolate, and quickly ran out about 2/3 of the way through coating all of the balls. Coating wasn’t that hard, but the coating seemed thick, and trying to dip them in any kind of topping wasn’t easy because the melted chocolate fell into the dippings and then I had a big mess. I later realized (later meaning a week after making these) that I forgot to add the shortening to the chocolate. If I had done this, it probably wouldn’t have been so thick!

None of that matters though, because they were DEEEELICIOUS. They were well received at our wine tasting, and gobbled up when I took them into work the following day. They were very rich, but oh so oh so oh so good.

Cheesecake Pops
From Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor

Ingredients
Five 8-ounce packages of cream cheese at room temperature.
2 cups of sugar
¼ cup of AP flour
¼ teaspoon of salt
5 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
¼ cup of heavy cream
Boiling water
Thirty to forty lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate for dipping and decorating
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325F degrees.

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes (Note: mine took 70 minutes to bake).

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight. When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

Tommy and I played host to Rachel and Mike and Tommy’s parents last weekend (Rachel and Mike on Friday night, Tommy’s parents on Saturday and Sunday night). I wanted to have a nice breakfast on Saturday morning, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen either. I remember reading a blog post about coffee cake recently. I read through the recipe and realized that if I didn’t want to spend all morning in the kitchen, I would need to make this coffee cake the night before (it has to cook for an hour and then sit for at least 30 minutes before eating).

This was fairly easy to make and tasted great. It tasted like good coffee cake with a little strawberry jam in it. Tasty tasty. Rachel, Mike, Tommy and I only ate half of the cake on Saturday morning, so we ate it for breakfast again on Sunday morning with Tommy’s parent. After sitting on the counter, covered, for a day, it was still deeeelicious.

Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake

Crumb Topping
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter, melted

In a medium bowl, stir together dry topping ingredients until combined, then stir in melted butter until damp crumbs are formed and the mixture sticks together into chunks when you squeeze it between your fingers. Set aside.

Cake
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup strawberry jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 350F and line a 9-in square pan (I used an 8 X 11-inch glass dish) with parchment paper. Lightly grease and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla, followed by the eggs, adding them one at a time until mixture is smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to sugar mixture, alternating with sour cream in two or three additions, until well blended. Spread evenly into prepared pan.

Stir jam in a small bowl until smooth and drop by spoonfuls onto the cake batter. Gently swirl through with a knife. Top with crumb mixture, clumping it by squeezing it between your fingers while you work and spreading it into as even a layer as possible. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (mine ended up baking for 70 minutes, at which point the middle still didn’t seem finished, but I took it out anyway because the crumb topping was beginning to burn. When I cut into it the next morning, it was perfect.) Cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Girl Scout season is here! I told myself that I would try my best not to buy any cookies. Because they’re expensive and I eat a lot of them. I decided to try and make my favorite cookie instead. They turned out surprisingly good (both in looks and taste). Even though they took about 4 hours to make, from start to finish, I enjoyed making them. I didn’t have much going on Saturday afternoon, so it was a fun way to spend the day. Eating them is fun too. If I made these again, I would improve on the caramel spreading process for sure. This was the hardest part, and the cause of 8 broken cookies. It took me so long to spread the caramel/cocunut topping on, so it kept getting hard, and I would have to heat it up in the microwave to soften it up again. By the time I got to the last handful of cookies, the caramel didn’t even want to soften up even when heated. So that was that. Those cookies aren’t as caramely and are a bit on the chewy side, but still extremely edible and delicious.

Samoas

Ingredients
The cookie:
1 cup butter, soft
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
up to 2 tbsp milk

The caramel mixture:
3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened)
12-oz chewy caramels
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk

The chocolate:
8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate

Preparation
The cookie:
Preheat oven to 350F. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt at a low speed, followed by the vanilla and milk, adding in the milk as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky (it’s possible you might not need to add milk at all). The dough should come together into a soft, not-too-sticky ball. Add in a bit of extra flour if your dough is very sticky.

Roll the dough (working in two or three batches) out to about 1/4-inch thickness (or slightly less) and use a 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make rounds. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and use a knife (I used an apple corer), to cut a smaller center hole. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are set. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The topping:
Preheat oven to 300. Spread coconut evenly on a parchment-lined baking sheet (preferably one with sides) and toast 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden. Cool on baking sheet, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

Unwrap the caramels and place in a glass bowl with milk and salt. Place bowl on a pot of boiling water and stir caramel mixture until melted. When smooth, remove from heat and fold in toasted coconut with a spatula. Using the spatula, spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 tsp per cookie. Reheat caramel for a few seconds in the microwave if it gets too firm to work with.

The chocolate:
While topping sets up, melt chocolate in another glass bowl over a pot of boiling water. Dip the base of each cookie into the chocolate and place on a clean piece of parchment paper. Transfer all remaining chocolate (or melt a bit of additional chocolate, if necessary) into a piping bag or a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off and drizzle finished cookies with chocolate.
Let chocolate set completely before trying to eat (this takes a few hours, unfortunately). Fortunately for Tommy and I, we left for dinner just after I finished making these, so we didn’t have to be tortured by watching the chocolate get solidified. I had them as a second dessert when we got home from dinner.

The process improvement that I would make next time is with how the caramel topping is applied to the cookie. I would leave the caramel in the glass bowl over some simmering water (so that the caramel stays soft the entire time). I would then dip the cookie in the caramel, then dip it in the coconut. I think that this would save a lot of time too. The only thing you would have to be careful about is that the caramel is very hot when it is at this stage, so you might get a few burned fingertips if you’re not careful about dipping the cookies.

I bought a box of the REAL girl scout cookies on my way home from the store today (this is the ONLY box I am going to buy this year). I was shocked that I had to pay $3.50 for only 15 cookies! My cookies are bigger but the caramel is a bit harder than the REAL cookies. That’s probably because there are a bazillion preservatives in the REAL cookie’s caramel. Oh yeah, and I got about 45 cookies out of the deal, AND they’re bigger. So take that girl scouts!

I have some heavy cream in my refrigerator that I am determined to use before it goes bad. Making chocolate pudding got me a few inches closer to the bottom of the container. It satisfied my sweet tooth just fine.

Double Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
3 tbsp cocoa powder (I used Dutch-processed because that is what I had)
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 cup milk
3/4 cup heavy cream
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp heavy cream

Preparation
Using the paddle attachment of your mixer, beat the egg yolks and sugar until light yellow and thick. Add the cornstarch, cocoa powder and salt. Bring the milk and heavy cream to a boil. With the mixer on slow speed, very slowly add the milk to the mixture in the mixer. Make sure that you start with just a few tablespoons of the hot milk at first, and then slowly add the rest. If you add too much of the hot milk at first, the eggs will cook and you will get small bits of egg in the finished pudding (I’m speaking from experience here).

Pour the combined mixture back into the pot and cook on low heat until thickened. Stir constantly while doing so. Once thick, remove from the heat and add the butter, vanilla and the heavy cream. Stir until the butter melts. Pour into serving bowls and cover with plastic wrap so that the plastic wrap is touching the pudding. Chill for a few hours.

Tommy’s family is spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with us. We decided to have a nice Christmas Eve Dinner, which turned out to be FABULOUS! The dinner was actually fairly simple and only required a little bit of preparation here and there throughout the afternoon. Harris Teeter had standing rib roasts on mega-sale, so we picked up an 8-pounder and experienced an immediate $40 savings by using our VIC card on one item. We had a roasted red pepper leek and potato soup for an appetizer, then served the rib roast with asparagus and bakery rolls. Desert was spectacular, a Nutella tart that I stole from someone else’s food blog.

Tommy and I have had the soup before but we thought that it would be a nice way to start the dinner. Elena was sick, so we thought that she could at least partake in this part of the meal if she wasn’t up to the rest. It was a nice, creamy incorporation of leeks, red peppers and potatoes. It was just as good as the first time that we made it.

The rib roast was insanely easy to make and way more delicious than expected given the minimal time that it took to prepare. The rib-eye portion of meat was okay (Tommy thought that this part was great). Then there was the portion on top of the rib-eye that was closest to the herb mixture. It was this portion that I wanted to eat forever and ever. It was marbly and full of seasoned goodness. We served this with asparagus, which I’m sure was good and I know I ate, but I do not remember the asparagus. The taste of the meat is still lingering in my head.

The nutella tart was the first tart that I have made. The crust came out absolutely perfect. The filling wasn’t as rich as I was expecting it to be, which was nice because it turned out to be a nice light-to-medium desert after a very filling carnivorous meal. I served it with whipped cream spiked with what else but frangelico.

Herb and Horseradish Crusted Standing Rib Roast

Ingredients
8 lb standing rib roast, with bones
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp pepper
1 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup horseradish sauce
2 tbsp fresh thyme
1.5 tbsp rosemary, roughly chopped
1.5 tbsp sage leaves, roughly chopped
7 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

Preparation
Heave oven to 325 degrees. Put rib roast in a roasting pan fat side up. Apply a very generous amount of salt and pepper. Combine butter, horseradish, thyme, rosemary, sage and garlic in a food processor. Pulse until mixture is blended into a paste. Spread paste on top of rib roast, and on sides (we tried spreading on the sides and it didn’t stay very well). Put in oven and bake until the middle of the meat reaches 125 degrees (about 3 hours). Let sit for at least 20 minutes before carving. Serve and enjoy.