German Chocolate Cookies

I love German Chocolate cake, so when I saw this recipe for German Chocolate cookies, I knew I had to try it. I needed to make some cookies to thank someone at work for helping me out, so I made these for her.

This recipe called for German’s sweet chocolate (which was named after a man named German, not of German origin). Well, I made these one of those nights when things weren’t quite going right. I had gone to the store to get the chocolate and when I went to melt it, the chocolate completely scorched and burned. I think there was a little water in the glass measuring cup that I used for melting the chocolate, which always causes problems.

I looked in the cupboard and I had some milk chocolate left over from another recipe that I thought would work for a substitute. Well, I burned that too! Yikes, I was running out of ingredients to use as a substitute. I finally used a mix of semi-sweet chips and milk chips, and melted them using a double boiler. The microwave usually works, but it let me down this time.

Well, despite the struggle with the chocolate, the cookies were great. Nice and chewy, with the added bits of pecans and coconut. They came together just as any other drop cookie, but they seemed special because of all the added flavors. I will make these again!

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup brown sugar, packed
¼ cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 4-oz. bar German’s sweet chocolate, melted
1-1/4 cups flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.
In a large bowl beat butter and sugars with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and stir until combined. Add the melted chocolate and stir until combined.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add to the butter mixture, beating until combined. Stir in the coconut and pecans. Drop batter by tablespoonfuls onto the cookie sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until cookies are set in the center. Let cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Adapted from Paula Deen’s Holiday Baking

Chewy Ginger Cookies with Cinnamon Chips

I really like ginger cookies, one of my favorites is the triple ginger cookie that I make. I came across this recipe on Bakingblonde’s weblog and thought I would give it a try. The recipe called for some good spices and molasses and also called for cinnamon chips, which seemed interesting.

I love this time of year when the stores carry all of these unusual baking chips. Cinnamon chips are one of those that can usually only be found this time of year. I try to stock up since I know that is my only chance to get these special chips. I thought I had some cinnamon chips, but I guess I had used them up. So I went to the store to find them. Well, I went to all these stores and I wasn’t able to find them! Stores had special displays for holiday baking, but no cinnamon chips. I can’t ever find raspberry chocolate chips either, I wonder if they make those anymore?

Well, my husband and I were out last weekend and hit one more grocery store, and they had the chips! I bought three bags since I didn’t know when I would see them again. It seems a bit too complicated to order them online, but I guess I would do that if I had to.

I like the flavor of these a lot, and they are so soft and chewy. I’m a little surprised that they are as chewy as they are since they use butter rather than shortening. The ginger cookie that I typically make uses shortening, and I’ve always figured that’s why they are so chewy. Maybe adding the molasses makes a difference.

3 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup molasses
1 cup Cinnamon Chips
1 cup sugar (for rolling dough balls)

In a medium size bowl stir or sift together the flour, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

In large mixing bowl mix together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, mix to combine. Slowly add molasses and beat to combine and mixture is creamy. Add the flour mixture slowly and mix until combined. Gently stir in the cinnamon chips.

Chill dough for about 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment or a silicone baking sheet.

Form dough balls and roll in the 1 cup of sugar. Place dough balls on prepared baking sheets. Bake in preheated oven for 9-12 minutes until edges are set and light brown. Do not overbake or cookies will be crisp. Cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes and then allow cookies to cool completely on wire rack.

Recipe from Bakingblonde’s Weblog (http://bakingblonde.wordpress.com/)

Tuesdays with Dorie: Thanksgiving Twofer Pie

Vibi from La Casserole Carrée selected this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: Thanksgiving Twofer Pie. This is a combination of a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie, as a way to answer the question of which traditional Thanksgiving pie should you make! In my family we never had pumpkin pie, so this was not a question growing up. I don’t really remember having pecan pie either. I just don’t remember what we had for dessert. It’s all about the turkey, right?

I’ve made a couple of pumpkin pies, despite the fact that I don’t really like pumpkin pie (pumpkin anything) all that much. I do like pecan pie a lot, and have made many of those, including miniature ones and a really fancy chocolate pecan pie. A couple of years ago my husband decided to make a sweet potato pie. I like sweet potatoes, so I thought I would give this a try. I really liked it so for this pie I decided to substitute sweet potato puree for the pumpkin puree. The only other thing I changed was I used bourbon instead of dark rum.

I’ve made this a couple days in advance of Thanksgiving, and I plan to serve it on Thanksgiving. I hope that it will keep for a couple of days! It came together nicely, but I did have to bake it about 10 minutes longer than the recipe specified. I also didn’t prebake the crust, because I didn’t want to over bake the crust. I think the crust looks perfect so I’m glad that I didn’t prebake. It saved me some time, too.

I’ll update after Thanksgiving to let you know how it tastes. Right now it just looks like a pecan pie!

Cranberry White Chocolate Drop Cookies

I had trouble deciding which recipe I would make this week. I had one recipe in mind but I couldn’t find one of the ingredients that I needed, so that one will have to make. My husband and I picked up a couple of items at the grocery store and figured that I would find something.

My husband brought out one of the cookie cookbooks that I have, but not one that I use very often. I’m not sure why I don’t use it more, it has some great cookies in it! My husband picked out three recipes to look at. Unfortunately, one of them needed to refrigerate for several hours, and the other two were bar cookies. I’d made a lot of bar cookies lately, so I wanted something different.

I was thumbing through the book and came across this recipe. I had all the ingredients on hand and it was quite different than the cookies that I had made recently. I like cookies that have a good fruit flavor, like this one does. This recipe called for fresh cranberries, but I left those out. I had fresh cranberries, but I didn’t think that it really needed the ½ cup of fresh cranberries. After all, it had 4-1/2 cups of other bits added to it.

The recipe also included a light glaze, but I left that off. My husband kept saying that they didn’t need a glaze and after tasting one of the cookies, I agreed completely. They are a bit of a “homey” looking cookie, but they have great flavor. The butter is a strong flavor and then you can really taste the lemon. The lemon in combination with the cinnamon is excellent.

1-2/3 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

1-1/4 teaspoons lemon zest

1 egg

2-1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1-1/2 cups chopped pecans

1-1/2 cups dried cranberries

1-1/2 cups white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. Put the butter in the bowl of a mixer and beat until lightened. Add the brown sugar and lemon zest, mix about 2 minutes until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the flour mixture and then stir in the pecans, dried cranberries, and white chocolate chips.

Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto the cookie sheets. Bake for 11-12 minutes or until browned around the edges and set in the center. Cool for 2 minutes on the cookie sheet and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Adapted from The All-American Cookie Book by Nancy Baggett

Gingerbread Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

Another occasion for a celebration cake at work! I’ve picked up a couple of holiday baking magazines this season and Paula Deen’s magazine has some great looking things. There were a number of cakes in the magazine that I was deciding between, and I eventually decided on this gingerbread cake.

So I’m usually a good planner and have the ingredients on hand. My kitchen is fairly well stocked, so some things I just take for granted. Well, I thought I had everything and then realized that I didn’t have enough oil. Fine, I hadn’t really gotten too far so off to the store. I get oil and then proceed to make the cake, but then realize that I didn’t have enough molasses! Off to the store again. Some times when things start like this I think nothing but the worst.

The cake came together nicely. It was originally supposed to be baked in 3 9-inch pans, but I don’t have a third pan so I just made it in two. It had to bake longer than the 20 minutes that the original recipe called for, but that’s ok. This was also supposed to have a cranberry filling, but I wasn’t sure that everyone would like that, so I just made a double recipe of the frosting and used that for the filling. (I’ve given the ingredients for double the frosting here.)

I’m not so great at frosting cakes, but I think I did a good job with this cake. I just need more practice. My cakes always dome a bit on top and then when you put the layers together there are some empty spaces to fill in. This was a bit hit at work and it fed a lot of people. I will make this again, maybe with the cranberry filling. It was honestly so good that I’m not sure I want to change too much!

I cup vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

1 cup molasses

3 eggs

3-1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons ginger

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon lemon zest

½ teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1-1/4 cups buttermilk

Frosting:

16 oz. cream cheese, softened

1 cup butter, softened

2 tablespoons orange zest

9 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.

In a large mixer bowl, mix oil, sugar, molasses and eggs. Beat on medium until combined.

In another bowl, mix flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, lemon zest, salt and cloves. Gradually add to the oil mixture, alternatively with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. (Add 1/3 the flour mixture, ½ the buttermilk, 1/3 more flour, ½ the buttermilk and end with the last 1/3 of the flour mixture.)

Pour into the prepared pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes and then remove from the pans to cool completely on a wire rack.

Make the frosting: cream together the cream cheese, butter and orange zest. Gradually add the powdered sugar until smooth. Fill and frost the cake.

Adapted from Paula Deen’s Holiday Baking

Tuesdays with Dorie: Arborio Rice Pudding

Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa selected this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: Arborio rice pudding. I am not really a fan or rice pudding, or tapioca pudding for that matter. Pudding just shouldn’t have “things” in it. I don’t mind pistachio pudding, but I’ve only really had that used in bar cookies. My husband, on the other hand, was really excited when he heard that I was going to make rice pudding. I figured I would be a good sport and make it and give it a try.

Here’s the reason I don’t like rice or tapioca in pudding: my experience, in using tapioca especially, was in chemistry class. I used to be a chemistry TA and in the spring we would have to prepare the “quals” samples for qualitative analysis. We’d get to use all sorts of interesting things to make the quals more challenging. Tapioca was a favorite to add to throw students off. So since then the idea of tapioca or rice pudding just seemed weird.

The recipe was exceedingly simple. I kept wondering what would make these few ingredients come together to make pudding. I opted for the vanilla version, since I wanted to try it in its simplest form. I cooked the pudding as the recipe called for, but after the cooking time the pudding hadn’t really done anything. I ended up cooking it more than twice as long as the recipe called for. It was supposed to absorb most of the liquid but it hadn’t really done that at all. Mine had eventually thickened a bit, so I figured it was time to refrigerate it.

I refrigerated this overnight and it did firm up quite a bit, but it was far from a thick pudding. I topped mine with cinnamon and nutmeg. I tried it and it’s ok, I still prefer chocolate pudding I think. My husband liked it, but he thought that it needed more rice. It also wasn’t as thick as he was used to, but I felt that it had thickened up considerably. I’m glad I gave it a try, but I’m still not a fan of rice pudding.

Cranberry Bliss Bars

This is a holiday favorite from Starbucks. I don’t know if these are available this year, but they’ve been popular the past few years. I look forward to the red cups that come every November, but I’m never sure about their baked goods. I often like what I make better than what they offer. These bars were an exception. They are really great! Cranberries and white chocolate, perfect for the holiday season.

I found this recipe on the Starbucks website a few years ago. Once in a while they post some recipes online, and I pulled this one off as soon as I saw it. I think that this recipe is a little different than what they sell in the store; these bars have a more pronounced ginger flavor than I really get with the ones from the store. I like ginger, so I’m ok with that.

These are softer than what you buy in the store, probably just that they are a little fresher. I’m usually someone who likes a lot of frosting on things, but this has a very thin layer of frosting and it’s just right. The recipe originally called for additional white chocolate to be melted and drizzled on top, but I don’t think that it needed it.

1 cup butter-- softened
1-1/4 cups brown sugar
3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1-1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup minced dried cranberries
1/4 cup white chocolate -- coarsely chopped
1/4 cup minced candied ginger

Preheat oven to 350 and lightly grease a 9x13 pan.

Beat butter and sugar together for the cake base, and add eggs/vanilla beating until fluffy. Sift together flour, ginger, and salt and then add to the butter/sugar mixture beating well. Fold in the cranberries, chocolate and ginger. Spread thick batter in pan and bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until light golden.

For Frosting:
4 ounce cream cheese -- softened
1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons butter -- softened
1 teaspoon vanilla

For Garnish:
2 Tablespoons minced dried cranberries

When cool, mix all frosting ingredients together and spread a thin layer over the cookies. Immediately sprinkle with the minced cranberries.

Cranberry Apple Almond Pie

My husband and I live in the Seattle area, which is city by all means, but it doesn’t take too long to get to farmland and orchards. We recently took a trip to Leavenworth, WA, a quaint Bavarian town in the heart of apple country. While we were there we stopped at the local produce stand and picked up some apples. They had so many varieties and I honestly can’t remember which types I got. I think I got some braeburn apples or maybe they were fuji apples, I can’t recall. We also bought another variety that was “perfumy.” They were all so fresh that we figured we couldn’t really go wrong.

I knew I wanted to make an apple pie, but wanted something different. We had an apple pie at a restaurant that had a strong almond flavor and the filling was more the texture of a cake. My husband found this recipe online, using almond paste. When I first started baking, I would never make a recipe that included almond paste since it was so expensive. I still use it in moderation, since it can add up so quickly. This recipe isn’t quite what we had at the restaurant, but there were some similarities.

Lining the pastry with almond paste was a great touch. The almond flavor permeated throughout the entire pie and gave a wonderful almond-apple-cranberry flavor. Rolling out the almond paste into a circle was a bit tricky, and involved several blows with a rolling pin to get the paste flexible enough to roll. It took some effort, but I was able to get it into a circle finally. I will definitely make this again (my husband keeps reminding me that we have apples left!).

1 unbaked 9" pie shell (from scratch or purchased)

7 oz box Odense Almond Paste

5 baking apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 cup sweetened dried cranberries

1/4 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon, divided

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup uncooked rolled oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped almonds

6 Tbsp cold butter, in 1/2" pieces

Preheat oven to 375 F. Roll almond paste between 2 sheets of wax paper to form a 8"-9" circle. Lightly press the disk of almond paste into the bottom of the pie shell.

Mix together in a bowl the apples, cranberries, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Pour mixture into the pie shell.

In a bowl, combine the remaining cinnamon, flour, oats, brown sugar, and almonds. Using a pastry cutter or your fingers, cut the butter into the flour mixture until crumbs are formed. Spoon crumb mixture evenly over filling.

Bake 50-60 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.

Recipe from http://www.odense.com

Tuesdays with Dorie: Kugelhopf

Yolanda of The All-Purpose Girl choose this week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe: Kugelhopf. I read through the recipe and I thought that it would be good. I don’t often bake with yeast, but I have in the past and have always had good luck. I didn’t have a Kugelhopf pan, so I figured that I would just use my Bundt pan.

I read through the recipe and calculated all the time it would take to make this, and it was a lot! I wasn’t sure when I would make it that I would have enough time, but then I remembered that Tuesday was a holiday. I thought I could make it on Tuesday, but I don’t usually like to wait until the last minute. (I’m a librarian; I’m all about being organized.) Luckily, I ended up having enough time to make this a couple of days in advance.

This recipe gives you the option of refrigerating the dough overnight. I didn’t do that and I was still ok. I knew that the Bundt pan that I was using was larger than the recipe called for, so I had to take that into consideration with watching the rising.

My dough came together nicely, although I have to say that this is the strangest bread that I have ever made in that it calls for less than 2 cups of flour. There wasn’t a lot of dough for my dough hook to work with, but it was ok. The first rising took a little longer than expected, but it wasn’t all that warm in the house. I deflated the dough and refrigerated it. Once I finally put the dough into the pan to rise, the house had warmed up and the dough rose well. For the final rising time, I went more by the time specified in the recipe than any sort of visual cue. My pan was bigger so I knew the dough wouldn’t rise to the top of the pan.

Mine didn’t rise any more during the baking time, which I think was ok. It came cleanly out of the pan and the structure of the dough was nice. From start to finish took 7 hours, which was a long time for eggy bread with raisins. My husband and I enjoyed the pieces we ate. I’ll use the rest for bread pudding, which I think will be great!

Rolo Cookies

So every year my husband and I buy Halloween candy in the hopes that we will have trick-or-treaters come to the door. We live in a townhouse complex and you would think that we would be an easy target: lots of homes in close proximity. When I was a kid, I went trick or treating around the neighborhood, and the houses were not close together at all!

We didn’t have any trick-or-treaters, so we had quite a bit of candy left over. We had some Rolos in our Halloween stash, so I decided to make these cookies. Chocolate cookie dough wrapped around the Rolos; the Rolos melt down and make a great caramel filling. (They are especially good when they are warm.)

I didn’t end up having enough Rolos for all of the dough, so some of the cookies had other fillings: Milk Duds, Nutrageous and Take 5. The ones with the Take 5 were really good. The salty crunch was really nice. The Nutrageous ones were good, too. The Milk Duds didn’t have enough flavor to work, but they were still ok. They just tasted like a nice chewy chocolate cookie.

2-1/2 cups flour

¾ cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

½ cup chopped pecans

48 Rolos

1 tablespoon sugar

Mix the flour, cocoa and baking soda in a bowl. Set aside.

Cream the sugar, brown sugar and butter in a large bowl with a stand mixer. Mix until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla, stir until completely combined. Stir in the flour mixture and mix until completely combined. Stir in the pecans. Refrigerate the dough for about 30 minutes for easier handling. (Don’t skip this step, trust me.)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Shape 1 tablespoon dough around each Rolo. Mold the dough around the Rolo and make sure that it is completely sealed in with the dough. Dip the tops of the cookies in sugar and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes until set. Don’t worry if there are some cracks, they are normal. Let cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Jean Olson, 1990 Pillsbury BakeOff, Pillsbury Best of the Bakeoff

Chocolate Chip Crumb Cake

If I ask my husband what he would like me to make for him, he always asks for chocolate chip cookies. Now I don’t mind making chocolate chip cookies once in a while, but I really like to make different things. In reading through all the great food blogs that I follow, I came across this recipe for chocolate chip crumb cake. I figured that I would try it and hopefully it would satisfy my husband’s request for chocolate chip cookies.

This recipe calls for mini chocolate chips in the cake and then as a topping. I decided not to use the chips as a topping. And since my grocery store doesn’t seem to carry mini chocolate chips, I used regular chocolate chips. I don’t know why I couldn’t find the mini chocolate chips, usually my grocery store is well stocked!

This turned out well. My husband said that it was good and an acceptable substitute for chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t end up using all of the topping, and I think that I would use less next time. The topping was a little thick on the top and made it more difficult to cut the cake. I would also use the mini chocolate chips if possible. The regular chocolate chips were a bit too heavy and sank a bit, a problem that wouldn’t be an issue with the mini chips.

¾ cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup cake flour
½ cup unsalted butter
¾ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. baking soda
¾ cup mini chocolate chips
¾ cup sugar
½ cup buttermilk
2 eggs
½ tbsp. vanilla extract
confectioners’ sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease a 9×5” loaf pan.

To make the topping, mix the flour and sugar together, add the butter. Using a pastry blender (or your hands), cut the butter into the flour until the dough is in chunks the size of peas. Sprinkle vanilla extract over the top, and knead into the mixture using your fingertips, until moist, clumpy lumps form. Set aside.

To bake the cake, sift the plain flour, cake flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl. In a small bowl, toss the chocolate chips with 1 tablespoon of the dry ingredient mixture. Set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter. Mix in sugar in two additions, beating for 1 minute after each portion is added. Beat in eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides after each addition. Mix in the vanilla extract. Alternately add in the dry ingredient mixture in 3 additions with the buttermilk in 2 additions. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure even mixing. Stir in chocolate chips.

Spread the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Spread evenly and smooth the top. Sprinkle the streusel topping over the cake batter, making sure that the whole surface is covered. (I didn’t end up using all of the topping.) Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Allow the cake to cool in the pans for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edge to loosen, then transfer to a wire cooling rack. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar just before slicing and serving.

Adapted from Annie’s Eats who adapted the recipe from Piggy’s Cooking Journal

Tuesdays with Dorie: Rugelach

Piggy of Piggy’s Cooking Journal picked this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, rugelach. This is one of those items that I keep thinking that I want to try and make, but never have actually tried it. Now I had the push to try it for the first time. I was familiar with the recipe and had seen it made before (on television, you’ve got to love the Food Network).

Dorie’s recipe calls for jam, cinnamon sugar, currants, nuts, and chocolate. That seemed like a lot of things, and since I knew that I had to roll these up, I wanted to keep it simple. I decided to use raspberry jam, cinnamon sugar, and nuts. I’d planned to use pecans, but at the last minute I decided to use the sliced almonds that I had. I didn’t have to chop those up so it was a bit of a time saver. My rugelach would be raspberry almond, which sounded good!

I’m always a little nervous when a recipe requires that you roll out dough to a certain dimension. I can usually manage to roll out something close to resembling a circle, so I wasn’t too worried. I seem to have better luck with cream cheese dough, and this was no exception. I was able to roll the dough out without any need to patch the dough. I spread it with the jam and added the toppings. It looked great. My counter was a big mess, but oh well.

I sliced them up with my pizza cutter and rolled them up. They looked good! They baked exactly as the recipe specified. The jam oozed out a bit and got a little browned, but that was the only issue. My silpat needs a good cleaning, but I was able to get the rugelach removed to a wire rack without much of a struggle. These were really tasty and I like that they aren’t too sweet. Perfect after the Halloween sugar overload!