Thanksgiving Just Desserts

After the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and squash, there's not always a lot of room for dessert on Thanksgiving. Still, I usually make three or four pies and cakes so we can have choices. But this year, thinking more is better, and having more people over, I made seven desserts. Yes, seven--it's not like I made 19 pies or anything. From front to back, we had classic apple pie, raspberry key lime tart, pumpkin chiffon pie, carrot cake, chocolate-cranberry-pecan pie, apple crumble cake, and mocha buttercrunch pie. Possibly it was too much ... but I don't think so. One day later, and there's not too much left.
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Chocolate Chip Cookie Fest

It's late June and I have a freezer-full of cookies. We've had some sudden breaks in the high heat, and I feel almost compelled to bake--if only because I can without heating up the whole house. Cookies are always good, and they store well too. The cookies above are toffee-oatmeal-chocolate-chip, based on the recipe in Diane Mott Davidson's "Crunch Time". The cookies below were perhaps a cry for more caffeine: chewy coffee chip cookies (like coffee chip ice cream, not with coffee-flavored chips) and thin, crispy mocha-cocoa chip cookies.







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Banana Cake with Pecans and Coffee Buttercream

This recipe, from Saveur, is delicious though a little different. The cake isn't super sweet, but the bananas and pecans take on a kind of caramelly flavor. The buttercream is, of course, rich; however, the coffee flavor really comes through, too.



Just a slice

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Mocha Turtle Brownies

Faced with yet another big snow storm and a lot of time indoors, I decided to try a recipe I'd been eyeing for while. The recipe, from Ghirardelli, was for caramel turtle bars. Out of circumstance, and preference, I made these into mocha turtle brownies, using a combination of mocha cocoa and espresso powder. In the end I had really dark, fudgy, chocolatey, chewy, nutty bars that work equally well with coffee or a big glass of milk. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Summer Is ... Coffee Chip Ice Cream

Coffee chip ice cream is one of the best flavors there is--chocolate chip, done right, being the absolute best. Done right meaning with slivers of shaved or finely chopped dark chocolate. Tonight we made coffee chip ice cream, done right, and it was delicious. The coffee ice cream recipe came straight off the pamphlet that came with the ice cream maker, and we added the chocolate, 3 or 4 oz, in the last few minutes.

Happy Birthday to my sister!

I made a seven-layer cake for my sister's birthday this year, alternating layers of sponge cake, mocha buttercream, crispy hazelnut meringue, and coffee buttercream. This is a variation on a 12-layer cake, but I skipped the chocolate souffle layers (and the accompanying buttercream layers) as it just seemed like too much. The cake overall has many parts, but none of them are very difficult. The sponge cake mixes up and bakes in about 15 min. The meringue is easy to make, but it does require more time for low and slow baking--in this case about twice as long as the recommended time. Despite the fact that we had perfect meringue weather today, the layers stayed chewy for ages. I left them to cool in the oven when I ran some errands, and by the time I came back, they had crisped up. I boosted the flavor of the coffee buttercream with Columbian coffee essence, as I wanted a fairly strong coffee presence. Some of that buttercream was then set aside and mixed with melted bittersweet chocolate to make the mocha buttercream. I used melted bittersweet Ghirardelli chips, which I always have on hand. Because I wasn't making all the layers, I only made half the buttercream recipe, which worked out perfectly. If I'd wanted to pipe anything, though, I'd have wanted more to work with. Apricot-almond coffee cake for breakfast ... a very cakey day! Now to use the Wii fit she received as a present ...

Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps

Chocolate and espresso are a perfect combination for a cookie. Or most anything else, really. The cookie dough is chilled and then rolled in confectioner's sugar twice. They really need that second dip to get the snowy white effect when they bake up and crack on the tops. The recipe is from Everyday Baking, a new (to me, at least) show on PBS from Martha's team.

Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are grown-up chocolate chip cookies (unless you want your kids wide awake all night.) Take your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and add 1-2 Tbs of espresso powder to the batter before you add the dry ingredients. The recipe I follow (from Baking: From My Home to Yours) uses chopped up bits of chocolate instead of chips. I didn't have any hunks of chocolate hanging around, so I put a bag of chips in the food processor and pulsed it several times. This way you have big pieces of chocolate and little slivers, which then melt into the cookie. The espresso flavor isn't overwhelming, but you can definitely taste it. These cookies are both crispy and chewy, and they combine chocolate, espresso, and finely chopped pecans ... the perfect way for a cookie to be, in my opinion.