Chocolate Pecan-Pie Bars

12. December 2011 · 42 comments · Categories: Baking, cooking, Dessert, food, recipes · Tags: , , , ,

For as long as I can remember, my mom used to spend the weeks leading up to Christmas vacation making at least 10 different kinds of holiday cookies. It was something I looked forward to every year, both because I loved helping and because my brother and I got to sample them!

When I was younger my mom would package up the cookies beatifully in little boxes or platters and bring them around to all of my brother’s and my teachers (we went to a very small school). When I was grown and out of the house but still in college, I always missed helping make the cookies but didn’t have a big enough kitchen to make them on my own.

So when I finally was in grad school and working at my internship and therefore had a place I could actually bring the cookies, I started the same tradition of my own. I hope to continue doing it when I have kids so that they can have the same wonderful memories I have :)

I like to bake at least 8-10 different types of cookies. I make sure they’re all cookies that freeze well since I begin baking several weeks ahead of time.

Sadly this year I couldn’t make as many cookies as I normally do because I’ve been so busy, but a few different kinds did get baked up, and Nate was more than happy to sample them all.

I found this particular recipe in my mom’s recipe box. I’m pretty sure she’s made them before but I couldn’t remember. They were simple to make, and so buttery and delicious! The photos don’t do them justice, as they were taken after taking them out of the freezer. When room temperature or hot out of the oven, they’re super gooey!


Chocolate Pecan-Pie Bars
From my mom’s recipe box

Print this recipe!

makes 48

3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, soft
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups Caro syrup
1 cup (6 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips
4 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease bottom and sides of 15″x10″x1″ baking dish.

In bowl, at medium, beat flour, 1/2 cup sugar, butter and salt til course crumbs. Press into bottom of pan. Bake at 350 for 20 min.

In 3 quart pan, stir corn syrup and chocolate on low til melted. Remove from heat. Stir in rest of sugar, eggs, vanilla til blended. Stir in pecans.

Pour filling over hot crust. Bake at 350 for 30 min or til firm around edges but slightly soft in center. Cool on wire rack. Cut into bars.

Sans Rival – October 2011 Daring Bakers Challenge

27. November 2011 · 47 comments · Categories: Baking, Bread, Breakfast, Brunch, cooking, food, recipes · Tags: , , ,

This month brought another challenge to my kitchen thru the Daring Bakers.

You may be curious what exactly a Sans Rival is. It sounds like some sort of enemy.  Luckily, this wasn’t a 10 hour long process, but instead a fairly simple dessert.

A Sans Rival cake is a popular Filipino dessert. “Sans rival” means “without rival” and any Filipino will argue with you that this is true. Although it’s one of the most popular desserts in the Philippines, its origins are certainly French. In the 1920’s to 30’s there were many Filipinos who went abroad to study. A good number went to France and learned many French cooking techniques which they then brought home. A Sans Rival is made with layers of dacquoise, typically using crushed cashews, with very rich French buttercream frosting. The dacquoise is allowed to bake and dry to a crispy layer so that there is the crunch of pastry and nuts with the buttery, silky frosting.

As usual, however, it didn’t come out exactly as planned. While the flavors were delicious, I somehow didn’t get my meringue to completely crisp up. It was still tasty but we had to eat the center portion with a fork and knife :)

I did a slight variation on the original recipe. While the host, Catherine, already altered the traditional recipe by adding cocoa powder to the meringue, she kept the original cashew nuts as the flavoring for the frosting.

Because I made the meringue chocolate, I thought what better nut to pair with it but peanut! I used chopped peanuts around the outside and also substituted peanut butter for part of the butter in the buttercream frosting. I have to say that the frosting was an awesome combo…definitely a great idea, if I do say so myself. I seriously couldn’t stop sticking my finger in and eating it straight up.

If you do nothing else but make this peanut butter buttercream, you won’t be sorry. I think I may make a double batch of it to top a regular old chocolate cake.

Blog-checking lines: Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers’ host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert – the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

Notes:
• Brushing the parchment paper with some oil will help you to peel it off after the dacquoise is baked.
• Do not grind the nuts down to a fine flour/powder. This recipe is better with the nuts in a grainy/sandy grind.
• It is important to peel off the parchment within a couple of minutes of it coming out of the oven. Certainly while it is still warm.
• After removing the paper, return it into the warm oven to dry out more as the oven is cooling down. You want crunchy layers.
•I halved the below recipe and rather than cooking the meringue in cake pans, I piped it into four 6-in circles on parchment lined cookie sheets 

Sans Rival:
Servings: 12
Meringue:
10 large egg whites, room temp
1 cup (240 ml) (225 gm) (8 oz) white granulated sugar
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (3 gm) cream of tartar
¼ cup (60 ml) (20 gm) (2/3 oz) Dutch processed cocoa (optional and not traditional)
2 cups (480 ml) (240 gm) (8½ oz) chopped, toasted peanuts

Note: You will need four layers which will mean that you might have to bake in two batches. Be sure to use fresh parchment paper and cooled pans for each batch.
1. Preheat oven to moderate 325°F/160°C/gas mark 3.
2. Line cake pan bottoms with parchment paper and butter and flour the sides really well.
3. In a large clean, dry glass or metal mixing bowl, beat egg whites on medium until foamy (2 mins.). Sprinkle with cream of tartar. Gradually add sugar, a couple of tablespoons at a time, continuing to beat now at high speed until stiff shiny peaks form. (about 7-10 mins.)4. Fold in nuts, reserving enough to use for decoration.(Note the more finely ground for folding into meringue. The coarsely ground for is decoration of finished cake.)5. Divide meringue into four equal parts. Spread in pans, evenly to edges. If doing batches, use fresh parchment paper and cooled pans for each batch.6. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove the meringue from the baking pans while still hot; allow to cool slightly. Peel off the parchment paper while it is still warm, it is difficult to remove sometimes when they have completely cooled.7. When cool, trim edges so that all 4 meringue layers are uniformly shaped. Set aside.

French Peanut Butter Buttercream:
(recipe by Me)

5 large egg yolks, room temperature
1 cup (240 ml) (225 gm) (8 oz) white granulated sugar
1/4 cup (60 ml) water
2 sticks (10 oz) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

Preparation:
Put the egg yolks in a mixing bowl. Beat at high speed until the yolks have doubled in volume and are a lemon yellow.
Put the sugar and water in a heavy pan and cook over medium heat, stirring the sides down only until all the sugar is dissolved and the syrup reaches 235°F/112°C (or thread stage).
3. With the mixer on high, very slowly pour the syrup down the sides of the bowl, until all has been added. Be careful as the very hot syrup could burn you if it splashes from the beaters. Continue beating on high until the mixture is ROOM TEMPERATURE (about 15 mins). Still on high, beat in the soft, room temperature butter a tablespoon at a time. Add peanut butter after you beat in the butter. Refrigerate the buttercream for at least an hour, and whip it smooth just before you use it.

Assembly:
Set bottom meringue on cake board with a dab of butter cream to hold it in place. Spread a thin layer of buttercream and then place another meringue on top. Repeat with a thin layer of buttercream, meringue, thin layer of buttercream, meringue, and finally buttercream the top and sides. Decorate with reserved nuts.
Refrigerate until ready to serve. It is easier to cut cold. May freeze.

Povitica – September 2011 Daring Bakers Challenge

27. October 2011 · 53 comments · Categories: Baking, Bread, Breakfast, Brunch, cooking, food, recipes · Tags: , , ,

Nate, his mom, and I are up in Cape Cod this weekend for the marathon. He’s taking a break from his usual full marathons and only running the half. Yeah, this is like a piece of cake to him. Meanwhile, I doubt I could even run 1 mile right now.

I totally forgot about posting this for the Daring Bakers today so I’m getting this post up quick.

In case you were wondering, Povitica (pronounced po-va-teet-sa), is traditional Eastern European dessert bread that is usually served during the holiday season. It is also known as Nutroll, Potica, Kalachi, Strudia, just to name a few.  I’m not sure if it’s related to Babka, but it seems very similar to that as well. Each loaf is filled with a sweet filling and rolled, and weighs an amazing 2.5 pounds!

The traditional filling for this bread is an English walnut filling, but other typical fillings also include apple/cinnamon, apricot preserves, and a sweet cheese (like cream cheese). I chose to make one traditional and one with a chocolate twist on the traditional.

The recipe called for ground walnuts, but I used chopped, and it really messed up the traditionally-filled one. Rather than having a sweet paste in the middle, the sugar got absorbed by the dough and I was left with just a nutty bread.

For the chocolate one, I replaced one cup of the nuts with a cup of dark chocolate chips and decreased the sugar amount by half. It was mighty tasty!

You’ll have to excuse me for not writing much, as we’re about to head out to get dinner! Anyway, I took off work today and tomorrow so I’m psyched for this long weekend :)

Blog-checking lines: The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

The recipe was long and detailed, but if you’d like to make the recipe, visit here. 

Chocolate-peanut butter pb cup cookies

11. October 2011 · 22 comments · Categories: Baking, cooking, Dessert, food, recipes · Tags: , ,

I was on my way to my friend’s apartment recently, and as usual was running seriously early. I never really understood people who are always fashionably late. I get so nervous that the subway will be delayed or the walk will take longer than expected that I allow WAY too much time.

It doesn’t really bother me, though, because I’m pretty good at keeping myself entertained. Sometimes this involves window-shopping, other times I find a good place to sit and either read the book that I always carry with me, play on my phone (i.e. pretend I’m doing something really important so people don’t look at me weird), or just occupy myself with my own thoughts.


It’s amazing how many random thoughts are going on in my head at any one time. Nate can attest to this, as I blurt out irrelevant things that makes sense to me at the time (Duh, I’m thinking about them!), but make no sense to Nate. He actually caught my incoherent blabbering on video the other day, unbeknownst to me. After watching it played back for me, I gotta say that I feel pretty bad for the guy and don’t know how he puts up with me.

As you can see, I’m very good at going off on a tangent! Aaaaanyway, so the other day when I was early and needed to waste some time in the Times Square area, I saw a store called World of Chocolate and could not refuse a quick time-wasting trip. I have to say, the name of the store was quite deceiving. It was a pretty big let-down considering it was all of about 100-200 sq feet of space and only had Hershey’s products.

While perusing the aisles, I came across a bag of mini Reeses Peanut Butter cups. Not only were they totally adorable (I love anything miniature!), but I imagined they’d be absolutely perfect for a cookie recipe. I was thinking pb or chocolate base but hadn’t made a final decision yet.

So I took these adorable chocolates home and waited til I had a spare moment to create something. I started with the recipe I had created for the Chocolate Chocolate chip cookies, but to add some extra pb flavor, I subbed peanut butter in place of the butter in the recipe. I wasn’t exactly sure whether this would work or not.

As I started to blend the batter I realized how dry and thick it was, so I threw in another egg. Again, I had no idea what this would do.

While the batter was still rather thick, I put giant 1/4 cup balls of dough on the sheets a

nd baked them up. When I took them out of the oven and onto the drying rack I was a little worried since each cookie felt like a brick. I swear, so heavy! So don’t get worried when your cookies turn out heavy too.

At this point I was slightly worried that they’d be all dried out on the inside. But lucky for me, this recipe ended up a win! They were the fudgiest chocolate cookies ever. Nate gave them a giant thumbs up!!

If you can’t find mini pb cups, you could easily chop regular pb cups into 1/4-1/2 inch sized pieces.


Chocolate-Peanut Butter PB Cup Cookies
Recipe by Me

Print this recipe!

makes 18-ish LARGE cookies

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup peanut butter
4 Tbsp melted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups mini reese pb cups (or chopped reeses pb cups)

Heat oven to 325 degrees and have racks on upper & lower middle positions. Put parchment paper on 2 oversized cookie sheets (or do it in batches with smaller cookie sheets).

Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, salt & baking soda in medium size bowl. Set aside.

Mix peanut butter,  butter & sugars until thoroughly blended by hand or with electric mixer. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture and beat at low speed until just combined. Stir in pb cups.

Roll scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Put ball on cookie sheet leaving 2.5 inches between each ball.

Bake about 15 – 18 minutes, switching sheets halfway through reversing sheets front to back and top to bottom. Cool cookies on cookie sheets. When cool, peel from parchment.

*Note, cookies will be very heavy when cooked!

Mint Brownies

16. September 2011 · 41 comments · Categories: Baking, cooking, Dessert, food, recipes · Tags: , ,

Chocolate and mint make a really good pair.  Kind of like Nate and I do, but without the occassional bickering ;)

My dad once told me that he likes mint chocolate, but not chocolate mint. I’m not even sure what that means. But I think he’d make an exception for these brownies…I know I would.

These came about after I made some mint-filled chocolates for the Daring Bakers Challenge and had a LOT of leftover mint filling. The recipe I had for the mint filling wasn’t part of the recipe for the chocolates themselves, so I ended up having a ridiculous amount left. I think that the amount I used in the candies was like 1/16th of it.

When I made these, they had a bit too much mint filling. This would normally be fine with me, but the filling is so sweet that too much of it literally hurts your teeth. I ate too much when I was taking them out of the pan, and then all I wanted was salty foods. Does that ever happen to you?

So I’m pretty sure this should be just the right amount. You can easily roll out the filling thinner if you don’t want as much.

In the end, these were super rich and totally delicious. Even Nate, who can eat a giant piece of cake in one sitting, could only have a small piece of these brownies. They’re even better warm. For some reason it cuts the sweetness. Or maybe they’d be good topped with some cold and creamy vanilla ice cream!


Mint-filled Brownies
Recipe by Me

Print this recipe!

Makes 24 large brownies

Mint Filling:
1/2 cup of sweetened condensed milk
2 oz. softened margarine, unsalted
1 1/4 lbs powdered sugar
1/2-1 tsp mint extract (taste to determine how minty you want it)

Brownie:
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon table salt
2 tablespoons dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 cups granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
5 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons mint extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Combine filling ingredients and mix until well blended and forms a “dough.” Can be done in a stand mixer or by hand, kneading well.

3. Roll out filling “dough” until it is slightly smaller than a 9×13-inch rectangle. Set aside.

4. Butter the sides and bottom of a glass or light-colored metal 9×13-inch pan. Butter/spray the pan well.

5. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and cocoa powder.

6. Place the chocolate and butter in the bowl of a double boiler set over a pan of simmering water, and stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and combined. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water of the double boiler, and add both sugars. Whisk until completely combined and remove the bowl from the pan. The mixture should be at room temperature.

7. Add three eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until just combined. Add the mint extract and stir until combined. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage, or your brownies will be cakey.

9. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate. Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until there is just a trace amount of the flour mixture still visible.

10. Assemble the brownies: Pour half of the brownie mixture into the pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Carefully lift the mint filling and place on the brownie batter. You can do it in two pieces if it’s easier.

11. In heaping spoonfuls, scoop the rest of the brownie batter over the mint layer and smooth to cover.

11. Bake the brownies for 40 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, and check to make sure the brownies are completely done by sticking a toothpick into the center of the pan. The brownies are done when the toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.

12. Remove the brownies from the oven and cool the brownies completely before cutting and serving. These are easiest to cut at room temp rather than after refrigerated.

11. The brownies can be stored, tight wrapped at room temperature, for up to 4 days. Best served warm with ice cream!

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