my kind of smores bars and coleslaw pt 1

So i actually felt a little pang of guilt having provided the two recipes in the last post with taunts of "i have better but here is this mediocrity."  I don't really like posting recipes without accompanying pictures because as a mostly visually-based learner i hate non-pictured recipes myself, when i want to know what it's all supposed to look like in the end so i know if i passed or failed.  And i just so happened to finish the last three potato chip cookies for breakfast this morning and i'd just die if i was forced to eat the other very disappointing cheese danish i picked up from sprouts for breakfast tomorrow.  What would be a better excuse to ignore the freshly laundered wrinkling-as-we-speak towels than to share some delicious recipes with my friends especially since it comes with the added benefit of smores bars for breakfast?  It's only a bajillion degrees in my kitchen today.

Also, luckily, i still have a single packet of graham crackers left over from the fourth of july smores bars i made and this recipe turns them into a real cookie, which i prefer over any cracker any time.  I really don't like crackers.  I try to, i honestly do, by topping them with cheese and spreads and peanut butter because the grocery store allures me with all sorts of new and interesting kinds, but they all suck the moisture out of your mouth like woah, resulting in that terrible cement-like sludge that attaches itself to the very back upper gums until you are forced to uncouthly dig your finger back there and dislodge it, making your company uncomfortable when you reach over towards the tray to grab another cracker right afterwards before you realize what you are doing. Or is that just me?

And it will distract me, temporarily at least, from the burning desire of leaving this godforsaken apartment forever, where i breathe dust and fumes every day from constant leafblowers and wait anxiously for the next hellminion child to inevitably move in next door as management gets less and less picky about tenants, or maybe they just hate us with our ever-growing mountain of complaints/maintenance requests and they purposely place the noisy ones near our windows.  Where we have an impossibly tiny kitchen, and the most hideous muddy greyish olive green "accent walls" that give us the exact cave-dwelling look i was going for in every room.  In fact i think the actual name of the color is "Soul Crushing."  And don't you just love the babbling brook sounds?  Except we are not by one of the several manmade creeks on the property--it is just our constantly running, apparently unfixable toilets.  And they just raised the prices on the laundry machines but half of them don't work because people do things like put tennis shoes in there and i have to clean lumps of dry detergent out of the washer because nobody seems to be able to read the sign that says liquid only and then i check for gum in the dryers--the dryers that don't even dry towels all the way through for $1.10 per dryer load, but by far the most annoying thing is the inconvenience of having to retrieve the laundry on time lest we risk it being manhandled by somebody else.

i get irrationally annoyed at this. a bicycle pump and manicure kit are among the items featured. (later i swiped that change)

but then i turn to see this and i am like, oh, yeah that is all me

orange cat, activate!

 don't you feel your happiness being destroyed by that putrid hue? this picture doesn't do it justice.  also this is our vitamin store, in the hallway

monkey in another box

We really liked this place, with all the foliage and wildlife and noise ordinances, for the first five years.  Objectively it is a pretty great complex and certainly one of the nicest ones around.  But after five years of needing the screens replaced annually because the friendly yet crafty squirrels have hungrily chewed through them (after already overturning the bird feeder and digging up my potted plants) as my cats just sit and watch, and us slowly outgrowing our two bedroom place but refusing to buy things like new and necessary furniture because "we're getting a house soon, we'll get some then!" and david uses the wine cabinet as a valet stand and i use the dining room table as a mail-sorting station, and we eat off of tv trays in the living room because after our long hard day (of david doing real work and me just nervously making sure the cats don't escape through the squirrel holes or strangle themselves on blinds cords, while slowly building up resentment for this overpriced dungeon until i finally crack, ahem) we want to sit on the lumpy, torn-up, cat hair-embedded couch and watch (more) law and order and simply relax.  But i digress.

Graham cracker cookies, marshmallow fluff, sugary goodness.  Wiiiine.  Happiness.

I'm afraid i can't properly credit this recipe because it's from the pre-actively-blogging time when i copy/pasted into word documents and then printed for my own personal use without worrying about plagiarism.  If anyone knows the originator i will edit in to credit them.  I'll post the written recipe, even though on this occasion i used nutella instead of chocolate bars (which google says is very unoriginal, sigh) and i accidentally made them upside down because i guess i was too eager to get my hands covered in marshmallow fluff to read the directions again.  I only made a half recipe because i already knew how dangerous these are.  Below is the full recipe.

Smores Bars - makes one serving 

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/3 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2 king-sized milk chocolate bars
1-1/2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff (not melted marshmallows) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease an 8 by 8 baking dish. 

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until light.  Beat in the egg and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder, and salt.  Add the dry mixture to the butter mixture at a low speed until combined. 

Divide the dough in half and press half of the dough into an even layer on the bottom of the prepared pan.  Place the chocolate bars over dough, breaking if necessary to fit a single layer no more than a quarter-inch thick.  Put the marshmallow fluff in a plastic ziplock that has been coated on the inside with nonstick spray.  Pipe the fluff out onto the chocolate.  Place the remaining dough in a single layer on top of the fluff (most easily achieved by flattening the dough into small shingles and laying them together) (i pressed it into another similarly sized pan and then turned it out on top of the fluff layer.) 

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until lightly browned.  Cool completely before cutting into bars. (or eat with fork as is)

second layer of dough

right out of the oven

i did not wait for it to cool completely this time

I know i sort of promised to supply the other, better coleslaw recipe but i have to continue that as a part two, because i've worn myself out today and the sirens of the smores bars are calling me.  Plus i think today's post is long enough and if you made it this far you deserve some of this:

 warm and gooey

 a new slice after it cooled completely

i worry there will be little left for breakfast

They have made me forget all about the wretched little kitchen from whence they came, and the worryingly darkening freckle on my shoulder, and about the maybe-arthritis that i think i am getting in one of my big toes.  All my woes, disappeared into sticky marshmallow melty-ness.

At this time i feel i must defend  my cookie breakfast and then batch of smores-eating.  like i said before i fully expected to eat ice cream for every meal when david was gone.  I like to occasionally indulge my five-year-old self without any pretenses of eating something healthy first, like i normally try to do every day just to feel like i took in enough vitamins to "earn" the entire batch of cookies i want to eat at the end of the evening.  But you, normal people, would be proud of me today because of this:

i ate about two cups of this purpley goo for lunch. purple goo consists of blackberries and greek yogurt

artichoke salmon and steamed broccoli for dinner, courtesy of a ready-meal and my fantastic silicone steamer thing.  admittedly i WAS planning to (finally) purchase and eat some black raspberry limited edition ice cream that i have had my eye on but i finished the birthday cake oreo carton too late, and unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, for my pants seams) all that was left on the shelf where the black raspberry was supposed to be was a lone, mangled-looking carton with a smashed lid and smudged ice cream residue (more purple goo!) down the side that i decided to pass for now but i will check the other target for tomorrow's dinner.

working title - I'm giving up the goods. or, The Whoopie Pie Recipe

Be prepared for pretentiousness, the whoopie pie is my thing. Also be prepared for a lot of commas.

There has been a sweeping trend of whoopie pies over the past few years, going along with the bigger trend of general handheld mini desserts like cupcakes and macarons, but to my dismay so many of the so-called whoopie pies disappoint.  Most of them are made like little cupcake sandwich cookies, and while better than regular cupcakes (since my main upset with cupcakes is that the ratio of frosting to cake is underwhelming and really, the frosting is the whole reason why i'm eating a cupcake in the first place) they should be ashamed of themselves by claiming to be whoopie pies.

I only lived in maine for a few years but some of those years were one of the several fatty mcgoo periods i've had in my life and aside from dunkin donuts vanilla creme-filled doughnuts, whoopie pies satisfied the sugar-and-shortening-shaped hole in my heart during that time.  I don't claim to be an expert on most things but, well, I ate a lot of them.  I still do.

With macarons you either make them right or they simply aren't macarons, and with cupcakes there are no real rules deciding what's considered a cupcake except that it has to be an individual serving of both cake and frosting (unless you are on Cupcake Wars and apparently individual cheesecakes can be considered "cupcakes" but you probably won't make it to round three) (i mean your frosting could be made from avocados for goodness' sake), and it seems that most of the nation has a similar idea about what constitutes a whoopie pie as they do cupcakes which is "anything goes" and that is sort of okay for the rounds part so long as they are cakey yet not too sweet, like instead of traditional chocolate you could have carrot cake or something, but you have to have the right filling.  There are a couple variations bastardations of the filling out there, and the filling is really what sets a whoopie pie apart from everything else.  If you use just a buttercream or regular frosting they are no better than an oddly put together cupcake. If you use marshmallow creme in the center then you basically just made a moon pie.  In my opinion a real whoopie pie has a thickened milk* and shortening/butter filling, and in my family if you make and eat them the day of it can have a wonderful grainy sugar texture too, probably because we made it wrong once and liked it the way it turned out.  I have vague memories of us once reading the recipe and just seeing "sugar" in the ingredients, and my dad just saying let's use half powdered half granulated so we can be at least half right. 

I am about to share with you a family secret, more secret than Secret Sauce which i have likely already explained to everyone i've made it for.  It is even a secret within the family because i think only myself and my dad has the recipe, which was originally clipped from a Portland Press Herald newspaper article**.  I have been dragging my feet in posting this because holding the key to such an amazing creation makes me feel special, important, and if i give up the secret then what good will i be? Why keep me around anymore? What else will be my contribution to the world if anyone and everyone can easily make these?  I am willing to take the risk of obsolescence because apparently i have been (probably drunkenly) promising to post this for some friends and i like to live up to promises made so long as they are actually doable, and not like "make the bed everyday" or something else impossible or illogical.  Posting a recipe i think i can manage alright.

Whoopie Pies - Makes 12 giant pies or a billion little ones 

For Cakes:   

1 cup shortening
2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 c plus 2 Tblsp cocoa, sifted
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour
2 tsp salt
2 cups milk

For Filling: 

2 Tblsp cornstarch
1 cup shortening
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups milk
1 cup butter, softened
3 cups sugar (i usually use just over half powdered, half granulated but all powdered is good too, without the grainy sugar texture)

For the cakes: cream together shortening and sugar until light.  Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until just combined, then add vanilla.  Separately, stir together the cocoa, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Add dry ingredients to shortening mixture while alternating with milk in small amounts, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.  Mix until just combined. 

Using a 1/4 c measuring cup, spoon batter onto parchment lined sheet pan, spacing about two inches apart.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Removing pan and reversing position in oven after 7 minutes of baking helps keep cakes more uniform.  Cool on pan, then fill.

For the filling: heat milk and cornstarch in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Cook while stirring constantly until mixture boils and becomes thick.  Refrigerate until completely cooled. (after this is fully cooled you can press this through a sieve in order to remove any cornstarch lumps you might have). Separately, cream butter, shortening, and sugar until light, then add vanilla.  Stir in the cooled milk mixture and beat until smooth and creamy.  Fill cakes.

Since i don't have any "making of" pictures (which i think is key when you have something vague like "mixture becomes thick") here are a million and one pictures of these defrosted but still incredible whoopie pies, showcasing my penchant for blurry focus and bizarre lighting!

look at those beautiful saran wrap indents

*This recipe's milk is thickened with cornstarch, but a few Tablespoons of flour can be subbed in for the cornstarch if preferred.  According to the article, most traditional would be made with flour-thickened.
**Recipe originally credited to Amy Gullicksen of Aurora Provisions in Portland, Maine.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate, and more pb and chocolate

We don't like peanut butter or chocolate in my house.

JUST KIDDING.  I think it is our favorite combo ever.  I love to add caramel to it too but we don't have any sugar free caramel right now.  If i wouldn't die of horrific nutritional deficiencies i would probably live off bowls of a mish mash of peanut butter, chocolate, marshmallow, and caramel all gooed up together, and french fries (not mixed in of course).  So it stands to reason that since we are eating nuts/legumes again i am going to be making a lot of peanut butter and peanut butter-chocolate things.  The squirrels are digging up my patio garden anyway so what else do i have to do to busy myself?

The first thing i made was Candice's Low Carb Ultimate Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies so that i could also make Candice's Low Carb Individual Peanut Butter Cookie Brownies.  In my haste i neglected to flatten down the peanut butter cookies so they stayed in rounded lumps but were tasty nonetheless.  I used some valencia chunky peanut butter with flaxseeds stuff from trader joes for the peanut butter and i chopped a couple of squares of the Simply Lite dark chocolate bar i had on hand in place of the chocolate chips.  My peanut flour also came from trader joes.  And i made sure to remember to reserve some of the uncooked dough for the brownies.

 Above are the baked cookies, below are the individual brownies with the pb dough inside.  Uhh, we forgot to take pictures of the middle of the brownies before we ate them all.  In my defense david ate them all.  But in his defense there were only 6 and he brought two to his parents.  I had one and i think i overcooked the brownie because while the cookies above were moist and delicious the brownie was too cakey for me, i was expecting something a little denser and it may have just been my baking time since i am mostly used to baking with regular flour.  I don't think that i added enough or big enough chunks of chocolate to the pb cookies so i would have just preferred them without any chocolate but i remembered too late that i have a giant bag of mini sugar free peanutbutter cups from NutsOnline that i could be adding to this stuff to make it amazinger.

The pb dough inspired me to create my own pb dough snack, so for the next couple of days i would just mix some peanut flour with a little water and splenda to the consistency and sweetness i desired at that moment, and then folded in some sea salt flecks and ate it off a spoon.  Very good and will probably become a staple in my diet.

As you might know, saturday was st. patrick's day.  I kind of hate it and think it's a dumb holiday (as much as i love drinking).  I don't like irish food, i am not huge on just drinking beer, whiskey is pretty good but i drink more american bourbon whiskey than irish, wearing green in my current state of paleness makes me look extra sickly, etc. plus for health reasons i am dry for a few months (no i am not pregnant!!!).  While david went out I stayed in for a perfect night of brownie experimentation that i have been looking forward to for a while.

I gathered my ingredients.  I have been on the lookout for as many coconut flours that i can find because Candice from tickle my sweet tooth is in canada and uses some crazy exclusive coconut flour specific to her area or something ridiculous that even the grocery store where she buys it will not even sell it and send it to me and she has noted in her blog that many people have claimed using another brand of coconut flour has resulted in baked goods that do not resemble what candice makes.  So in effort to find a local match I rounded up what i could, which was a pitiful three kinds since the aloha-nu is indefinitely out of stock.  All of the stats vary slightly and none of them match with what candice claims her coconut flour stats are so i didn't really know what to expect.

 I started with the green bag of coconut flour and while those were in the oven i began to make another batch with the canister coconut flour, when i realized this called for a LOT of cocoa powder and i had gotten a new kind of cocoa powder from trader joes instead of my usual cacao powder whateverness i have in the pantry because it boasted richer flavor and it also had less carbs so i was like what the heck.  Well i did not have enough to make a third batch so i couldn't make any with the bob's red mill coconut flour.   Also i had only one box of unsalted butter and one box of salted so i used half and half in my recipes for the sake of keeping everything exactly the same.  I usually use regular salted in ALL of my recipes but occasionally i buy unsalted and this recipe just happened to call for it.  By the way the recipe i used is this one.

 The green bag and the canister had very similar stats and surprise surprise they came out exactly alike.  Since only a few Tablespoons of actual coconut flour are used in the recipe the overall stats were virtually the same as well.  Probably not the best coconut flour experiment recipe to use, i should probably test with a coconut pound cake or something that uses more coconut flour.  I cooked the brownies for exactly 18 minutes in an 8 x 8 pan and cut them into 16 squares.

 Below you see side by side they are identical.  The only problem is, and i asked candice this already but she is sort of busy with a new baby so i don't expect an answer soon, that i think she uses kosher salt in all of her recipes, not just the ones that specifically say kosher salt.  I used regular table sized sea salt and i felt they were far too salty, and i like salty-sweet combos.  I know i did use half salted half unsalted butter in the recipe but that would not cause it to be that salty.  It wasn't like biting into a salt lick or anything, and i actually had to eat a couple to tell whether i liked them or not, but it kind of overpowered most of the sweetness i imagined it should have had, it was just enough salt to make me question its brownie palatability.  However, i had enough cocoa powder to make a half batch using all unsalted butter with a little bit less salt than called for as well, and they were still a little "hmmm."  It actually could be something small just exacerbated by the new cocoa powder i used for the first time, like maybe it is more bitter chocolate than either she or i thought it would be and it just needs more sweetener?  I meant the texture is divine--gooey and melty and creamy and cakey all in one and i am certain if you baked it a couple minutes longer you could make it an even more cake-like brownie because the edges were more cakey than the center, so there is no problem there at all.  I will certainly try it again with different ingredients and salt measurements to make it perfect for me.

At first i was a little desperate, not wanting to have made two batches of brownies that were practically inedible so i tried to frost them with a sweet cream cheese frosting but that only made the brownie taste saltier in contrast to the sweet frosting.  So I set them on paper towels and stuck them in a ziplock bag to see if david thought they were salty too.  Super strangely, the next night (after a lot of grease from the butter had soaked up into the paper towels) they were not as bad as i initially thought.  David thought they were good.  I think my tongue just needed a reset?  Maybe it was the butter that was part of the problem?  They still had a slightly pure-cocoa flavor so i think next time i will add more splenda for sure but i ended up eating like six of them in one sitting so whatever happened was good.  Maybe i just need to eat them when i am really tired.  I put them in the fridge and will try them again in a couple of days since this whole thing is just so weird how it's salty then it's not so bad and maybe it will be salty again? Maybe i am crazy?

Anyway since i didn't have enough cocoa powder to complete my experiment i made peanut flour brownies too.  I used half almond butter half pb just to mix things up because i was feeling creative.  And i chopped up some Simply Lite milk chocolate bar to sub for chocolate chips.  This thing came out looking like a giant peanut butter cookie.

 But the texture and flavor was absolutely delicious.  A+ but i am still remorseful i didn't remember to use the mini sugar free peanut butter cups instead of the chopped chocolate!  These were much softer in texture than the pb cookies i made earlier in the week so there was an obvious cookie recipe and a brownie/cake recipe.  hmmm i should probably practice practice practice with more of her recipes to get the hang of all of the nontraditional ingredients.  Or i should probably not because then i will end up eating most of them like usual.

I figured out the stats for my own ingredients.  I don't count carbs or calories in granualted Splenda so for the pb chip cookies they were 100 calories; the individual brownies were 170 calories; the regular chocolate brownies were 165 cals and 3 carbs each, and the peanut butter chip brownies were 125 cals and 2 carbs.  All rough estimate, and overestimated to be on the safe side as usual.

Sugar-Free Liars

I need to go on a mini rant right now, after trying to look for already-low carb baked goods recipes last night when i came across several sites and blogs that touted "sugar-free" recipes only to find that they seem to think that it's just the pure white granulated cane sugar that counts as sugar. Well i'm sorry to tell you that no, that is only one form of sugar. Your precious honey, molasses, maple syrup, brown sugar (which is just granulated white sugar sprayed with molasses!), tubinado sugar, etc IS ALL SUGAR TOO. And it all pretty much acts the same way in your body as the white stuff. When i say sugar free i even exclude any fruit because i know that fruit has fructose, which is sugar. Or agave, which is basically just low-glycemic sugar but it's still sugar. Yes there are trace minerals in a lot of those substitutes and i applaud you for trying to be more "natural" and "healthy" by using them but i think you're a lying liar if you call it sugar-free.

One of the biggest problems i have with this is not only wasted time browsing through sites that don't actually have what i want is that sugar provides a function in baked goods and candy recipes and not every recipe is going to come out as intended if you just replace honey with splenda. Sugar lets things get crunchy, gooey, sticky, browned, caramelized, brittle, chewy, it helps yeast rise, generally provides texture, and a bunch more things.

So, for the record, if i post any recipe as "sugar-free" it will have no other sweetener than sugar alcohols or splenda. If, say, something calls for a dark chocolate bar or some "sugar free" jam in it (and for whatever reason i do not use my favorite sf "baking" chocolate bars--which are very delicious to eat on their own too but they also make great quick sf chocolate chunks or melting chocolate) i will label it as "low sugar/optional sugar free" or something like that. Later this year i will experiment more with Baker's unsweetened chocolate bars because they are slightly more economical than the Simply Lite ones and for large batches of things that comes in handy.

The only sugar substitute i currently use is Splenda. I get the giant bags of the granulated stuff auto-shipped from Amazon every so often. I know technically the granulated kind has less than a carb per serving because of the dextr-whatever they put in it to make it flake and not clump but i've yet to see the liquid stuff anywhere and the texture of the granulated is needed in some cases. I do on occasion use the Splenda brown sugar blend but not often. I can't tolerate Stevia or rebiana or whatever name it goes by because i'm pretty sensitive to the aftertaste of it but if you want to use it in place of Splenda in any recipes i post then more power to you. I have a bottle of maltitol syrup in my pantry that i'm looking forward to experimenting with, and a bottle of sugar-free "honey" that i believe is made of xylitol in case i want a honey flavor. Another flavor-sweetner i have is this sugar free maple syrup which in my opinion is worlds above the Mrs Butterworth's sugar free crap since they only specialize in "pancake syrup" which is nothing like real maple syrup and an abomination to anything you put it on. Oh, and i have a bag of granulated xylitol that i've not tried using yet. To sum things up though, i primarily use granulated Splenda and use the other sugar subs sparingly.

Okay! To reward you guys for suffering through that lecture i'll give you one of my favorite low-sugar/sugar free-optional chocolate dessert recipes. It's from The Wine and Food Lover's Diet by Phillip Tirman, MD. This recipe gives you a lot of options to vary how much sugar you want int there so if you don't low carb you can add all sugar. If you only want half the carbs or using too much Splenda bothers you, you can add half sugar. Or if you're like me, you'll use all Splenda most of the time. This is also gluten free if you use those types of ingredients.

Flourless Chocolate Cakes - serves 5

1/4 cup hazelnuts

1/2 pound dark chocolate (at least 60% cacao) coarsely chopped (i use the dark Simply Lite bar, but i've also made it with the milk chocolate one and it came out delicious too)

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1/4 cup Splenda, plus more for whipping cream (optional)

1/4 cup sugar (this is where you can sub in all Splenda for totally sugar free)

1/4 cup almond meal (i use Bob's Red Mill)

3 eggs (try for room temp, y'all, because i find it better for baking)

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional) (Trader Joes has a no sugar kind, bourbon vanilla, if that amount bothers you)

In a small, dry skillet over medium heat, toast the hazelnuts, stirring constantly, until they just begin to turn light brown, about 5 minutes. Immediately enclose the nuts in a clean kitchen towel and rub vigorously to remove the dark brown skins (this may permanently stain a terrycloth towel for some reason, fyi). Do not worry if tiny pieces of skin remain on the nuts. Pour the nuts into a colander and shake to separate the skins from the nuts. Coarsely chop the nuts and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl suspended over, but not touching, barely simmering water in a saucepan, melt the chocolate with the butter, stirring occasionally until smooth (This is where my laziness kicks in and i actually just stick the chopped chocolate and butter in a pyrex glass measuring cup and pop it in the microwave, periodically stirring. keep a close eye on it and stop it just before it's completely melted because stirring it will melt the last few pieces anyway). Set aside to cool to room temperature.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or in a large mixing bowl with a hand-held mixer, whisk together the 1/4 cup of Splenda, the sugar (or more Splenda), and the almond meal. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. On low speed, whisk in the cooled chocolate mixture.

Divide the mixture among five 1-cup ramekins, filling them three-fourths full (i use muffing tins and they come out great. if you only make five instead of dividing it into six, remember to fill the empty cup halfway with water to prevent overheating of that section. if your pan is not nonstick i'd suggest spraying them very lightly with cooking spray). Bake until the cakes begin to crack slightly on top, 18 to 22 minutes. While the cakes are baking, in a small bowl, whip the heavy cream with the vanilla and a pinch of Splenda (or more) (if using) until soft peaks form.

Run a small, sharp knife around the sides of each cake and invert onto a dessert plate. Top with a dollop of whipped cream and a scattering of hazelnuts. Serve warm.

These come out dark and fudgy and really are best served warm but if you are too desperate for something chocolatey to use the microwave for a few seconds then cold/room temp is good too. I've frozen some and they kept pretty well that way in case you don't want to be tempted to eat the entire batch in one sitting and have to force yourself that one extra defrost step in the future. I keep them in a ziplock bag and put them in the fridge.

continuing the godiva binge plus more!

okay so last night in somewhat of a tipsy (do people still use that word or is that a circa-j kwon era word?) blur i ate some of godiva's new dessert bars: tiramisu, milk chocolate covered cheesecake, and dark chocolate lava cake or something else dark chocolatey i dunno.

tiramisu: white chocolate covered coffee flavored mousse-y cream. delicious. it doesn't taste like awesome alcoholy traditional tiramisu but i love white chocolate and i happen to love coffee too, and the textures together were good.

milk chocolate covered cheesecake: i'm more of a filling person when it comes to chocolates like i'm more of a frosting person when it comes to cake, and i feel that godiva kind of coats their bars fairly thickly in relation to how much filling there is in the bar. it seems that all of their bars "end" with the chocolate encasement on your tongue rather than a mixture of the filling and the coating, unless i am just always eating it wrong? so this was a disappointment seeing as i could hardly tell the gooey filling (not as nice texturally as others, especially compared to the tiramisu) was cheesecake flavored. the milk chocolate overpowered it almost entirely. i could only tell the center was not milk chocolate, not that it was a whole 'nother flavor.

dark chocolate lava cake somethingness: you know, the rest of the bar is in the other room and i hope to update the description for the sake of posterity but the bar was just dark chocolateness. i dunno what i was expecting, but i don't think you can turn lava cake into a bar. i think the center was more solid than even the cheesecake bar.

lemon mousse truffle: this is the second time i tried it, i bought a tray of them when they were on sale. i think i liked it the first time i ate some because i was toasted, this time just tipsy i was more discerning. i prefer lemon meringue type lemon or lemon curd type, and this was very lemon zesty. it had a sort of bitterness all throughout that i identify with the zest instead of the tartness of the juice and i was sad for this.

my newwww favorite kettle corn is colby's kettle corn - salty sweet addiction. it's not entirely glazed like some but there are a few pieces that have a crisp layer of salty sugar crystals clumped together to form a crunchy flavor packed coating. the rest is lightly dusted with sugar and salt and you end up with a small pile of crystals at the bottom of the bowl (or bag) that you can eat up by licking your fingers and jabbing them to scoop them up.

ftr i made stella's eating stella style pumpkin pound cake and it came out extraordinarily well. i made it exactly to specs. recording this because the other day i made the low carb carrot cake muffins from the low carb baking and dessert book but forgot the extra cream cheese i am sure i put in the first time i followed the recipe and it came out dryyyy. then again i also doubled the recipe so maybe i messed up trying to do that.

godiva truffles

in an attempt to delay the start of my diet i think i will review some truffles.

new and improved pumpkin truffle - pretty damn good. it's that one in the orange foil with a curly little twig and leaf to make it look like a pumpkin. i don't remember how last year's tasted so i can't attest to the new and improvedness of it but embarassingly enough i think i still have some in my stash and could dig them out and compare if i got another of the new ones but it might be unfair to judge year-old, old pumpkin truffles against new fresh improved ones.

red velvet truffle - i honestly don't understand the OMGness of red velvet that everyone seems to fawn over and this is no different. it's good chocolate on its own i suppose but it tastes no different to me than some other muted chocolate flavor.

chocolate eclair truffle - so delicious. one of my new favorites! i love love love custards and creams and this is a very awesome creamy vanilla custard ganache in the center of a milk chocolate coating that is a perfect thickness, not thick but not too thin that you can't taste it after the center has melted away in your mouth.

pumpkin cheesecake truffle - another freaking amazing one! the coating is a little on the thick side but that is likely due to the two chambers inside, one holding a creamy "cheesecake" filling and another the thick yet creamy pumpkin pie filling. i liked it.

creme brulee truffle - they don't usually have descriptions at the boutique and with a name like creme brulee i thought it would be self explanatory like "carrot cake" might be. but no. this thing has a chocolate ganache inside of its white chocolate sprinkled with sugar crystals shell. not what i was expecting so naturally i hate it. it is probably very good if you like chocolate ganache masking as a silky eggy slightly burnt sugared custard but i don't and i want the latter.

more to come later.

Baking galore pictures

This is a retro post because i realized i had a bunch of baked goods photos from Christmas 2010 that i didn't put up so here in the future year of 2012 i am going to post them. Christmas is when i go nuts with baking things (and eating them) and this time i made the handmade basic bread recipe from The River Cottage Bread Handbook, along with some bagels from the same book, and trying new nut flours for french macarons - i think i made cashew, pistachio, and hazelnut - using the recipe from my beloved Syrup & Tang. This is before i knew how to make italian meringue buttercream so the macarons were half unfilled (because there were just so many and they were fine to snack on as is) and then the other half had regular buttercream. I think this is also the year i made World Peace Cookies and Blueberry and Cream Cookies, but sadly there are no photos of these. I did however eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for about a week straight though so they were definitely a success.

Hazelnut macarons, setting, getting their sheen on

Pistachio macarons, setting

more hazelnut

finished pistachio macarons

finished hazelnut

i think these are more pistachio

bread!!

raw bagels rising, before boiling


finished bagels