TWD: Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies

Well...actually, I made these last year, so I decided to skip this week (sorry, Lisa of Surviving Oz - I love the new logo!). If you're interested in what I thought about them in May 2008, complete with terrible photo, here you go:

Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies

I'll give you a hint. Despite my recent declaration of love for all things coffee, I thought the espresso was a bit much. But other than that, yum good.

Next week: Denise of Chez Us picked Brioche Plum Tart on pages 54-55

Last week: The Perfect Party Cupcakes

The Perfect Scoop: Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream

I've loved coffee ice cream since I was child. This is due, no doubt, to the three formative years I spent living outside of Providence, Rhode Island, when my dad had a job there. We left when I was three (and not a moment too soon, according to my mother - she never quite got used to the place), but clearly something stuck.

Rhode Islanders are crazy for anything coffee-flavored. In Rhode Island, and fortunately in my current home state of Connecticut, you can buy Autocrat coffee syrup and use it to make coffee milk, coffee cabinets, or a concoction near and dear to my heart since my college days in Western Massachusetts, the frappe. (That's pronounced FRAPP. Don't get all fancy and add an "e" on the end.)

Here is a spur-of-the-moment, in-the-mood-for-ice cream recipe. It's really, really good. In fact, I'm a little nervous about how easy it is to make, and how likely I am to have all the ingredients handy at any given moment. I could make it every day...and I just might.

Vietnamese Coffee Ice Cream from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

Makes 1 quart

1 1/2 cups sweetened condensed milk (I used the entire 14 oz. can, so it was a touch sweet)
1 1/2 cups brewed espresso (or very strong brewed coffee) (I used strong coffee)
1/2 cup half-and-half
Big pinch of finely ground dark roast coffee (I used instant espresso powder)

Whisk together condensed milk, espresso, half-and-half and ground coffee. Chill thoroughly, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Oh, wow. Hold on. David Lebovitz has a recipe for Vietnamese Coffee Popsicles on his website. Can I tell you how badly I need a stash of these in my freezer?

TWD: Perfect Party Cupcakes

This is a tale of four cupcakes. That's right. Four little cupcakes.

That's what you get if you quarter the recipe for The Perfect Party Cake, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie selection (thank you, Carol of mix, mix...stir, stir). Carol has the recipe, along with a gorgeous rendition of the cake, on her blog.

I knew I didn't need an entire cake sitting around, so using the number of egg whites as a jumping-off point, I made the tiniest batch of cake batter ever (I've transcribed my recipe-reduction notes below, in case you ever get the hankering for four cupcakes). I didn't have a lemon on hand (poor planning), so I skipped the zest and used orange extract instead of lemon extract. After 20 minutes in the oven, I had four perfect little white cupcakes. For so little work, I couldn't believe how tender and flavorful they were. Now when my daughter wants to decorate cupcakes, I can throw together 4 (or 8, or 12, or 16) of these little babies, or, heck - make the actual cake! This is a recipe I will use again and again.

Now, I have a confession: although I do love butter, I do not love buttercream. And the comments I was reading on the Perfect Party Cake's buttercream led me to believe this one was extra-buttery. So for this project, I decided to make the Orange Marmalade Buttercream from Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor (I know, some of you are cringing, but all the icing/frosting recipes are 100% homemade, and work beautifully). I skipped the coconut and went straight for the orange decorative thingies.

The Perfect Party (Cup)Cake(s) - yields 4
*This worked for me - you may have to play around a bit depending on your ingredients.

1/2 cup plus 2 TB cake flour (I like Queen Guinivere from KAF)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 cup plus 1 TB milk
1 egg white
1/4 cup plus 1/8 cup sugar
1/4 tsp grated lemon zest (I skipped this)
2 TB (1/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 tsp lemon extract (I used orange and used the full-recipe amount)

Follow cake directions as in Baking: From My Home to Yours; bake 4 cupcakes for 18-20 minutes.

Orange Marmalade Buttercream (adapted from Cupcakes! from the Cake Mix Doctor)

2 TB (1/4 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
scant 1 cup of confectioner's sugar, sifted
2-4 tsp orange juice
2 tsp orange marmalade

In a small bowl, cream butter until light. Add sifted sugar and blend well; add orange juice 1 tsp at a time until desired consistency is achieved. Stir in marmalade. Frost cupcakes and serve.

Next week: Tribute to Katharine Hepburn Brownies (chosen by the winner of the Logo Contest - Lisa of Surviving Oz - pages 96 and 97)

Last week: Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise

Barefoot Contessa Parties!: Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies and Grilled Herb Shrimp

I was leafing through my heavily tabbed copy of Barefoot Contessa Parties!, having a dinner crisis. With a newborn and a preschooler, my modus operandi for grocery shopping is to do it as infrequently as possible. Of course, this sometimes results in having nothing to eat.

But my freezer is jam-packed. How can we have nothing to eat? We did have a half-bag of frozen shrimp. I looked at the recipe for Herb Grilled Shrimp and, miraculously, we had all the other ingredients on hand (except fresh basil, so I used some thyme instead). So easy to throw together, so quick on the grill - and absolutely delicious over couscous. I hacked off some of the mountains of salad greens we got through our CSA for a salad. How resourceful am I? Put this one on your summer grilling list, stat.

The recipe is on the Food Network website. I love the episode summary:

"Just when Ina's friends Frank & Stephen expect a low key supper-Ina has something else in mind- a fun surprise dinner by the ocean. Ina cooks filet of Beef sandwiches, chilled Gazpacho, Endive and Avocado Salad, Grilled herb shrimp and outrageous brownies."

Sounds like fun. Well, take away the filet, gazpacho, endive, avocado, and brownies, and that was our dinner, 3.5 miles from the ocean. No picture - from grill to table to stomachs in five minutes flat!

But wait! I made dessert, too! Also from Barefoot Contessa Parties! is Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies (recipe courtesy of Food Network, again). I chose these so I could use up half a bag of Nestle white chocolate chips (not premium white chocolate - sorry, Ina). And then I threw in a handful of Barry Callebaut white chocolate chunks for good measure (very premium, and much tastier). Between the nice dose of kosher salt (I love that Ina uses this in baking - it's the only basic salt I keep in the kitchen) and the Bensdorp Dutch-Process cocoa, these tasted deep, dark, and just a little bit like the cookie-jar version of the World Peace Cookie. They are also ridiculously easy to make. So make them already!

TWD: Skipping the Dacquoise

Sorry, folks. Although I love pineapple, coconut, and meringue, I couldn't pull the Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise together this week. We had five straight days of wet, wet weather - not the best time for meringue-making. And there's nothing more disappointing than a chewy, deflated meringue. Boo!

But I don't even have to feel guilty, because Laurie gave us all some summer slack. Thank you, Laurie! I'll still try and make at least two of each month's recipes, anyway.

Please visit Andrea's blog for the recipe - and please check out our Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll to see everyone's creations.

Next week: Perfect Party Cake, as selected by Carol of mix, mix… stir, stir (pages 250-252)

Last week: Honey-Peach Ice Cream

TWD: Honey-Peach Ice Cream

Last week, ice cream makers all over the world were brought out of hibernation to make Honey-Peach Ice Cream, our Tuesdays with Dorie selection du jour. Although we've had really iffy June weather here in Connecticut - rain, followed by a smattering of sunshine, then more rain - I was more than ready to kick off ice cream season with my trusty Cuisinart and this recipe, chosen by Tommi at Brown Interior. You can find the recipe on her blog, in addition to great photography and pithy verse.

What you won't find here is a picture (sorry). I brought the finished ice cream to a friend's house for a moms' group meeting. A child psychologist came to answer our child development questions, such as "Why are four-year-olds so frigging annoying sometimes?" and "Am I a bad mother for wanting to hide in my closet sometimes?" As she explained the mysteries of young children to us, we ate the ice cream, and I didn't get a picture. I'm sure any other picture on anyone else's blog will be aptly descriptive, and probably much better executed than anything I could have done.

If you don't own an ice cream maker, start scavenging tag sales and find a cheap one so you can make this ice cream. Don't let the lack of good local peaches stop you, either. I could only find rock-hard Southern peaches in my supermarket. I know that you Southerners and Westerners are enjoying fabulous stone fruit right now, and I don't begrudge you for it. But I also know that you're sending the really questionable fruit up to the Northeast and saving the good stuff for yourselves. I can't blame you. In a couple of months, we'll have good Connecticut peaches. But for now...frozen peaches will have to do.

This ice cream...what can I say? It was incredible. I used tupelo honey from the Savannah Bee Company, and the honey flavor didn't overwhelm at all. I didn't care for the little icy specks of peaches which were folded in at the end of the freezing process, and would probably just puree them all next time. But that's a very minor complaint. I loved this ice cream and will make it again. Thank you, Tommi!

Next week: Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, selected by Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen (pages 293-295)

Last week: Parisian Apple Tartlets

TWD: Parisian Apple Tartlet

We have Jessica of My Baking Heart to thank for this week's easy, elegant Parisian Apple Tartlet. The ingredient list and difficulty level were about right for a sleep-deprived slacker like me. I think I made the entire recipe in about five minutes, not including baking time.

I didn't use (gasp) all-butter puff pastry, because I had one more sheet of Pepperidge Farm lurking in the freezer, and I decided that its time had come. I was about to press the creased portions together to make four tartlets, then took a look at my fluted biscuit cutter set and realized I could miniaturize these babies. I made nine mini-tartlets using the 3" cutter. Getting the little pinches of butter and brown sugar to stay on top of the apples was a challenge, however. If I make these again mini-style (and I will), I'll melt the butter and sugar together first and glaze the fruit so it distributes more evenly. The finished tartlets (which were gone by sundown) were wonderful - simple and delicately sweet.

As Dorie suggests in the notes accompanying the recipe, you can do this with lots of different fruits. These look fancy-dancy, but could be quickly and easily mass-produced for a dessert tray. Next time I find myself with a lonely puff pastry sheet - all-butter or not - I'll know just what to do. Thanks, Jessica - these tartlets are about as close as I'm getting to Paris in the near future.

Well, the tartlets, and this fantastic book that Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet gave me for my birthday: The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz (who is a FOD, or Friend of Dorie). This was at the top of my to-read list, and Mary must have performed a Vulcan mind-meld on me or something, because she handed me a copy the day before my birthday. Merci beaucoup, Mary! If you don't yet read David Lebovitz's blog, or receive his hilarious Twitter updates, or compulsively read his cookbooks (especially The Perfect Scoop), do yourself a favor and start today.

Next week: I step out on The Perfect Scoop by making Dorie's Honey-Peach Ice Cream, as chosen by Tommi at Brown Interior.

Last week: Cinnamon Squares

King Arthur Flour's Baked Doughnuts for National Doughnut Day

Here's a post that languished in draft format for a whole week. Please excuse its lack of timeliness - I'm running on about half brain power lately.

Last Friday was National Doughnut Day. Apparently, this is not just a frivolous excuse to eat doughnuts, or an ersatz holiday conjured up by Big Doughnut (Dunkin' or Krispy Kreme) to sell more dough. According to the Holiday Insights website, National Doughnut Day "honors the Salvation Army "Lassies" of WWI. It is also used as a fund raiser for needy causes of the Salvation Army."

To properly mark the occasion, we first picked up a doughnut at Dunkin' Donuts. It had pink icing and patriotic red, white and blue sprinkles, which is a strange combination, but it made my 4-year-old happy nonetheless.

I realize that the following statement will permanently mark me as a non-native New Englander, and maybe even get me thrown out of Connecticut, where you can't throw a rock without hitting at least one or two franchises, but...Dunkin' Donuts? They don't really do it for me. Sure, I'll grab a Boston Cream or glazed stick once in a blue moon. I do love their coffee, but because I grew up in a non-doughnut-worshipping culture (southern California, where Winchell's are few and far between), I'd rather spend my calories elsewhere.

So I have to ask myself why I purchased not one, but two doughnut pans (one standard, one mini) a few months back. Well, obviously, my subconscious was preparing me for National Doughnut Day!

We came home and made Baked Doughnuts from King Arthur Flour. They were incredibly quick and easy to throw together, and my daughter had a good time upping their flair quotient with white icing-in-a-can (ick) and green sprinkles ("because it's spring").

When I purchased my doughnut pans, I also bought a baked doughnut mix from King Arthur. Well, the scratch version is much cheaper and just as easy, and makes a tender, delicately spiced, not fried doughnut. If you don't want to spring for another specialty pan, you can use a mini bundt pan (as Tracey at Tracey's Culinary Adventures did) or even a muffin tin. But then they wouldn't be doughnuts, would they?

Baked Doughnuts from King Arthur Flour

* 1 cup Round Table Unbleached Pastry flour or 7/8 cup King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (I used unbleached)

* 1/2 cup sugar

* 1 teaspoon baking powder

* 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

* 1/4 teaspoon salt

* 1 teaspoon cinnamon

* 3 tablespoons dried buttermilk powder

* 2 large eggs

* 3 tablespoons vegetable oil

* 2 tablespoons water

Directions

1) Whisk together all of the dry ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

2) In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, oil and water (or buttermilk or yogurt) until foamy.

3) Pour the liquid ingredients all at once into the dry ingredients and stir just until combined.

4) Butter or grease the doughnut pan; non-stick pan spray works well here. Note: even though the pan is non-stick, since the doughnuts are low-fat they may stick unless you grease the pan first. Fill each doughnut form half full.

5) Bake the doughnuts in a preheated 375°F oven for 10 to 12 minutes. When done, they'll spring back when touched lightly, and will be quite brown on the top.

6) Remove the doughnuts from the oven, remove them from the pan, and allow them to cool on rack. Glaze with icing, or coat with cinnamon-sugar or any non-melting sugar.

Baked Root Beer Bundt Cakes

A while back, around the time that I took the plunge and brought Baked: New Frontiers in Baking into the cookbook family, I noticed that the Bake-Along gang (led that week by Nic at Bakeologie) was making the Root Beer Bundt Cake. I didn't make the cake that week - I'm not part of the Bake-Along crowd, more of a blogreader vicarious follower - but promised myself to try it when I had a chance.

I've always loved root beer - especially those little candy root beer barrels our mailman used to give us when we were kids. I'll bet mailmen (whoops, mail carriers) don't hand out candy to kids anymore.

Then there was sarsparilla, which I once loved ordering in the "saloons" at Knott's Berry Farm. I haven't been there since the late 1980s, but I'm guessing the Wild West theme is long gone from Knott's. Did you know that, according to Wikipedia, the Smurfs' preferred food is sarsaparilla leaves? Or that it's the Stranger's favorite drink in The Big Lebowski?

OK, random tangent time is over. Root beer is a key component of this rich, chocolate bundt cake. Having read some of the Bake-Alongers' comments, I wasn't sure that 12 ounces of root beer would do it for me (I used Jones brand, which uses natural cane sugar). So I hit my friend Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet up for some of her root beer extract. She palmed it off to me in the nursery school parking lot. It felt very illicit, in a suburban housewife kind of way. I owe her some eggnog extract at Christmastime, and if I don't pay up, boy, I'd better watch my back.

I added one teaspoon of root beer extract to my batter, which I poured into my mini-bundt tins.
After baking the cakes and waiting for them to cool, we sampled one. Rich, chocolatey, and tender...with just a hint of root beer. I remembered making a Coca-Cola cake once, in which the cola accented the chocolate flavor without standing out on its own. The root beer cake seems to follow that line of thinking, even with the added extract.

I'm sure the icing would have amped up the root beer flavor a bit, but I opted not to make it. I had this crazy idea that I would keep a couple of the mini cakes for testing purposes, then dump the rest at my town's Historical Society bake sale. I had promised to bake something, and I figured they could ask at least a dollar or two for a decently sized mini bundt cake. I dropped my cakes at the table with a friendly but perplexed Society volunteer, then ran off to the Memorial Day parade. I haven't heard any rumors around town about "that fabulous root beer bundt cake I picked up at the Historical Society - who made it? I must find out!" But the cake was good, nonetheless - a solid chocolate bundt cake. Next time, I think I'll drink the root beer.

Megan at My Baking Adventures has the recipe on her blog.

TWD: We have no Cinnamon Squares today

So this is the second week in a row of TWD flaking (as opposed to baking).

I made the Cinnamon Squares a couple of years ago for my book club (so say my notes in the cookbook) and really liked them. Since my baking activities are somewhat curtailed lately due to my infant, I thought I'd save my firepower for something new to me. Sorry, Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures - I think you picked a great recipe this week. If you want to see how everyone else did, please check our blogroll - and check Tracey's blog for the recipe and some very cute cupcake shots.

Next week: Jessica of My Baking Heart picked the Parisian Apple Tartlet on page 319

Last week: Chipster-Topped Brownies