Catching Up...

I can't seem to stop baking. It's really becoming an issue--although I am not complaining. I love being able to bake again every day...I had forgotten how much I need that daily time for meditation. I realize that chocolate chip cookies can't be a religion, but they're close enough.

On Monday, I made Better Than Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake Muffins. Now, Let me begin by saying how surprised I am that I haven't yet featured these little numbers on this blog before. the BTCCCC Muffins are my go to recipe when I'm lacking in time or just need a sure-fire crowd pleaser. In fact, I used to make these at least once a week when I was at UF.

Backstory:

These muffins were my second recipe. I had baked a Death By Triple Chocolate Orgasm cake for one of my best friend's birthday back in 12th grade, and, impressed with the fact that he now had a personal baker, said friend (let's call him "Matt," since that's his name), Matt, asked me to make him blueberry muffins. Matt has a thing for blueberry muffins. We used to go to the Whole Foods Market at night and buy muffins and then drive to the beach (this is what kids who don't drink in high school do...). Now, I don't know if you've ever been to the Whole Foods Market at about 9 pm and purchased a blueberry muffin, but you should try it. At any time of the day, really.

So I baked him these blueberry muffins...and they went over really well. So I got creative. I used the basic muffin recipe and then substituted chocolate chips for the blueberries and created a spice mixture (laced with a little bit of espresso) to be sprinkled over the tops of the muffins...and the BTCCCC Muffins were born!

I really love this recipe--there's no butter, which is a huge time saver, and the flavor of the muffins is to die for. I cranked out two batches in the time it would probably take to start a cookie recipe. Each batch, makes about 30 muffins, which is the only problem, since I have only one mini muffin pan, and that makes only 24 at a time.

When you bake mini muffins and only have 6 in a 24 muffin pan, the cooking spray and excess spices left from the first bake tend to continue cooking, even though there are no muffins in those spaces. So while the second batch of muffins reached its tail end, the cooking spray was turning to steam in my oven.

I had gone to put on makeup while the muffins baked, since I had to run out as soon as they were done...and when I went to open up the oven to check on the muffins, steam burst out and hit me in the face--which was not good, since my mascara was wet. Naturally, I closed my eyes...but then quickly realized that my eyelashes were stuck together! Fortunately, I managed to separate them and then remove the muffins from the oven...but I learned my lesson: don't lean over a 400 degree oven until your mascara has dried.

Better Than Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake Muffins
(I apologize for the quality of this picture. I forgot to take one at home, and the lighting in the theatre is very dark...)



Tuesday was Seth's birthday. (Seth is one of the actors in the Shakespeare Fest.) Last year, I baked a really sick extra chocolate cake, and I figured that I needed to try something new...so I made Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cheesecake Cookie Bars. My biggest problem with this recipe--because I've made it once before with much success--was that I lacked the right pan in which to bake this insane concoction.

Bar cookies are really just cookie dough baked into a cake or bread pan and then sliced up into bars. Picture a chocolate chip cookie cake, only much thicker (because there's more leavening in the recipe) and not round.

So I mixed the chocolate chip cookie dough (a slightly different recipe from my Better Than Chocolate Chip Cookies) and the chocolate cheesecake mix. Then in a 9" cake pan (which was definitely not big enough) went a large portion of the chocolate chip cookie dough. I baked it at 375 until the sides started to brown and then in went the cheesecake and the remaining cookie dough. By the time such occurred, the original cookie dough had already risen almost to the top of the cake pan. So these were MUCH thicker than I had intended. And now had cheesecake, which takes FOREVER to cook, on top. (General rule of thumb: the thicker/denser the batter or dough, the longer it's going to take to cook all the way to the center.)

I checked on the Cookie Bars about 1 million times that afternoon, and yet the center refused to cook all the way. I think it was more than an hour later (which included the first bake of the cookie foundation) that I was able to remove the Cookie Bars and then cool and slice them.

I worried that the bake time had perhaps ruined the batch, so while they chilled in the refrigerator, I whipped up a batch of Better Than Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake Muffins, just in case. Then my sister Allie came home from camp and bravely tried a Cookie Bar (because, y'know, I really had to force her...) and deemed them yummy.

Apparently my fellow actors agreed! (Once again, sorry for the quality of the photo!)

Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cheesecake Cookie Bars



I took Wednesday off from baking, but received that night from Pierre, another actor in our merry band, a request for homemade caramel. "Oh dear," thought I...caramel is probably one of the most temperamental of all of the recipes I've ever tried. It ranks up there with meringue on the "probability I'm going to mess this one up" scale.

But if caramel Pierre wanted, it would be caramel he would get. I made my Mocha Caramel Macchiato cookies, hold the macchiato. (I didn't feel like making icing, and they really didn't need it anyway.) I creamed the butter and sugars before I started the caramel, since the caramel needs to be added to that mixture before it has time to harden...and then I started cooking the sugar. To my surprise, I didn't burn anything and I didn't have to start over. It came out perfectly! I quickly poured 1/2 a cup into the butter/sugar mixture...and then ALL of the sugar caramelized. I had to spend several minutes chopping up the pieces of caramel with my spoon. I waited for everything to cool before I even thought about adding the eggs...no one wants scrambled egg cookies. Then I finished making the recipe as normal. When I put the cookies in the oven, the caramel chunks cooked and slowly melted, giving the cookies more spread than usual. As they cooled, the caramel hardened, and the chocolate chips assumed a permanently melty composition.

The end result was a soft, chewy, utterly evil (thanks, Lisa) cookie. I am very proud of how they came out. There was nothing left by the end of rehearsal--and here's why:






And now I have a rather big project (which I have set out for myself) to accomplish this week...stay tuned.

Kay

As American as...

Apple Pie Cookies!

Happy post-Independence Day, everyone! I hope that your day was filled with good food, lots of fun, and few fireworks-related injuries.

Yesterday, my Dad decided we were going to have a "cookout." At our house, that usually entails Dad cooking outside, yes, but he's the only one who ever sets foot out the door. The rest of us stay inside and patiently wait for the fruits of his labor. So, okay: cookout. My father also invited my boyfriend--who accepted the invite--so this meant the potential for embarrassing stories and/or tons of really corny jokes and weird comments. The usual family-meeting-the-boyfriend silliness.

I figured that, in order to deflect attention from the crazy, I should cook up some sort of distraction--literally! So I made an old favorite, the Apple Pie Cookie.

It's been a long time since I first made these cookies. I think the last time might have been in Jessica's kitchen at UF--well over a year ago. But I pulled out my recipe and ran off to Publix (the most glorious grocery store on Earth!) for the essentials.

Unfortunately, while I did (finally) remember to pick up some nutmeg and allspice, I forgot the cream of tartar. (This was the first mistake.) I did not realize this mistake until I was halfway through transforming a gloppy mass of shortening and sugar into cookie dough. Now, if you've never heard of cream of tartar, you're probably not alone. It's a white powdery substance that forms on the inside of wine barrels. When the wine is emptied, the powder is used to stabilize egg whites and as an acid to enhance the leavening power of certain products like baking soda. You can find it in the spice aisle of all reputable grocery stores.

My lack of cream of tartar was a problem--leavening is kiiind of important in this sort of cookie dough. So I did a Google search of cream of tartar substitutes, and found that there really are no good ones...however, in a pinch, and in certain recipes, so long as you have an acid you should be okay. An acid like vinegar or lemon juice. Jackpot. In went 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. And I prayed that a) it would work and b) it wouldn't make the cookies taste awful.

I also had some difficulty with my apple pie filling. First of all, the butter nearly exploded out of the saucepan because the stove heated up too quickly. Then the sugars started to caramelize, even though I turned the heat allll the way down. But I managed to catch it in time, put in the apples, and transfer the filling to a nice, cold bowl.

The cookies were easy to put together, and I dusted the top of each with cinnamon sugar before throwing them in the oven.

They came out looking exactly as they were supposed to...and so I crossed my fingers and waited until my first taste-tester arrived.

The good news is that, despite the substitution of lemon juice for the cream of tartar, the cookies came out beautifully. They were indeed a hit (as they always were when I made 'em at UF).

I guess the sugary distraction worked, because a great time was had by all (myself included). Yesterday was honestly a perfect day.

The Cookie!



Enjoyment of the Cookie
The Boyfriend



The Father

Going nuts...Coconuts, that is.

I love making whipped cream. It's always an adventure, because, when you don't own an electric mixer and you're making it by hand with nothing but heavy cream, powdered sugar, and a whisk, it takes FOREVER and you don't know if it's going to work until the moment when, suddenly, the cream begins to stiffen and little peaks begin to form. (Yes, that was a run-on sentence. I'm not a teacher any more, so sue me.)

No matter how many times I make whipped cream, I'm always surprised when it works. Don't ask me why.

Anyway.

On Monday, as promised, I decided to make Strawberry Shortcake Cookies. Of course, the batch turned out without a hitch...there is something that is just SO perfect about those cookies. I can't put my finger on it, but they are an instant winner and a definite Kay's Cookies classic. My biggest problem in making them, however, is that there is ALWAYS too much whipped cream left over when I'm done. Now, usually, I mash up an entire pint of strawberries and empty them and the ensuing strawberry juice into the pint of whipped cream (which, because I do not use gelatin to stiffen the mixture, usually melts it a little and makes the whipped cream a little too runny to use for anything but cookies). Instead, I separated the whipped cream into two containers--one for the strawberry cookies and one for--get this--Coconut Cream Cookies.

I've never made Coconut Cream Cookies, but I figured that I might as well do something with the whipped cream and the shredded coconut that I had waiting around my fridge for just the right occasion. (In case you couldn't tell, the right occasion was now.)

So I used my basic sugar cookie template and changed the amounts of sugar (half white and half dark brown) as well as dumped in a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder. Why? Not sure, but I was feeling it. I made the rest of the cookie in the normal way and then flattened teaspoon sized balls of dough, added a dollop of the coconut whipped cream to the center, and then re-rolled the dough around the center. (This is the same way I make the Strawberry Shortcake Cookies.)

The result was pretty, well, awesome. I asked Andy his opinion (since he's now my official taste-tester), and he said that they were really tasty, but they definitely need...something. I do agree. Perhaps chocolate chips? I think this is one with which I'm going to keep experimenting.

Strawberry Shortcake Cookies





Coconut Cream Cookies






Either way, I brought both batches of cookies to rehearsal on Monday night, and they were DEMOLISHED. I'm talking empty tupperware by the end of the first run. This is the first time I haven't had to send Andy home from rehearsal with a container of cookies. (He's probably happy about that fact, because--and I know this from personal experience--it's impossible to let those cookies sit on the counter for more than a day and a half. They keep making those adorable puppy-dog eyes at you, and you can't help but pick them up and eat them, just so they won't feel so lonely, all by themselves on the counter like that...)*

Today I used up the last of the strawberry whipped cream (because there was STILL some left over, even after splitting it up between two batches of cookies--and I would have used up the coconut whipped cream, but it looked like someone's spoon had mysteriously attacked it in the middle of the night, and so that container ended up in the sink). I also made a batch of Better Than Chocolate Chip Cookies. The problem with the BTCCCs is that I forgot to halve the amount of butter, and so I had to make a full batch...which yields 50-75 cookies, depending on the size of each individual cookie.

So, Shakespeareans, be prepared for sugar overload tonight.

Kay



*Yes, I am probably insane. Why do you ask?

Pick Me Up and Drop Me...

I apologize for the lack of updates over the past week; this has been a ridiculously busy and emotionally overwhelming couple of days for me. Suffice it to say that, after a trip back to South Florida to see my incredibly talented younger sister's musical and to sort out my life, I am back in Gainesville and officially finished with my undergraduate career. That's right: I turned in my thesis today. It's over.

Now that things are falling into place in terms of my future employment and my monetary and living situations, I'm starting to realize that I graduate in three weeks. That's it. Only three weeks left until I officially have no more excuses. This is the real world, baby.

The worst part about the whole "graduation" thing is that I have to leave my friends. So I've been a little down in the dumps about that. I've been needing a pick me up.

And what better pick me up is there than tiramisu? Tiramisu is a lovely little dessert, the origin of whose name is derived from the Italian for "pick me up." I went out and bought myself some mascarpone cheese and decided to use kahlua and espresso instead of brandy or Marsala wine. And then I made a cookie.

The actual dessert is a combination of ladyfingers soaked in an espresso syrup and covered in layers of mascarpone cheese filling, shaved chocolate, and cocoa powder. So I had to do a bit of maneuvering to make the tiramisu cookie taste just right. I substituted a kahlua-caramel sauce (which I made up) for some of the sugar in my basic sugar cookie recipe, to imitate the taste of a ladyfinger soaked in espresso syrup. Then I put the cookie dough into muffin tins and filled the dough with a mascarpone and kahlua filling as well as two semi-sweet chocolate chips.





Then I covered the cookie with another layer of cookie dough and dusted the tops with cocoa powder. The result was pure yumminess. I am so happy that these came out well...they were a complete experiment, and I pulled the recipe completely out of the air. But when I took them to my friend's house last night, they disappeared in a blink of an eye. So I'm happy with that. Talk about a pick me up!

Tiramisu Cookies


Now, this is a little belated, but I'm slowly catching up with my posting, so:
The other night, my friend asked me to make him some savory drop biscuits. I'm not averse to making savory foods, but I'm much more into baking diabetes-inducing sweets. So this request was a bit of a challenge. But I am not one to turn down a friend's request, so I went on a quest for the perfect Bacon Cheddar Drop Biscuit.

After reading through several different recipes, I couldn't find one that seemed to do the drop biscuit justice. So I tinkered for a bit, combining recipes, changing measurements, and dicing bacon into little, drop-able pieces, until I got a moist, tasty, savory drop biscuit. The house smelled incredible when they came out of the oven...My friend gave 'em two thumbs up--although I, being a semi-vegetarian am not going to be trying them out any time soon! Maybe a regular drop biscuit will be in order in the next few days...mmmm.

Bacon Cheddar Drop Biscuits






Alrighty then. I'm off to use up some tiramisu filling before rehearsal...
Kay

Coffee Cake...in a Cookie.

I thought I couldn't top the last cookie. But I think this one (almost) literally takes the cake.

I didn't have much on hand yesterday, but I had the itch to bake a batch of somethings. So bake a batch of somethings I did. I remembered that a friend of mine happened to be a huge fan of crumb cake, and that he'd been having kind of a bad week. It seemed the only thing to do was bake some crumb cake-like cookies. My only problem was how to get the crumb cake part on the cookie. With my red velvets and boston cream pies, I fill the insides with the frosting. With the strawberry shortcakes, I fill the insides but sort of work the strawberry cream throughout. But a crumb cake is topped with a mixture of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and all purpose flour. If I filled a cookie with that, it would just bake into the cookie, all uneven and fairly awkwardly. If I just put a crumble on the top after the cookies baked, it would all fall off. Not my idea of a good cookie.

So I decided on coffee cake. More specifically, coffee buttercream frosting, which would allow me to press a crumb cake-like topping onto the cookie, which would keep the insides awkward-free and the tops attached. So I took my basic cookie recipe and quadrupled the brown sugar, took down some of the white, and added a little bit of espresso for taste. I didn't have my usual buttercream recipe with me in the kitchen, so I improvised. Oh Oh OH my god. It's SO good. (Related anecdote: I came home after rehearsal last night, and my roommate asked me, "Kay, what is that stuff you have in the fridge." I replied, "Leftover Coffee Buttercream Frosting, why?" Quoth she, "I hope you don't mind, but I tasted it. And then took a big spoonful. It's amazing.")

I went through two batches of these last night. Two! And both times they just...disappeared. I'm SO happy with these. I love when mad experiments work out right. I love baking cookies. And most of all, I love sharing them with my friends. When they're smiling, so am I.

Baking could easily be a religion. I think it might actually be mine. After all, pure vanilla extract is the ultimate Good.

Here's a (visual) taste of the Coffee Cake Cookie:




Kay

Best Recipes....EVER.

I cannot even begin to describe how good the two recipes you are about to read taste. Just...wow. Really.

So, let's start with yesterday's cupcakes, which I made for this month's Cupcake Hero contest. As soon as I heard that this month's special ingredient was marshmallow, my mind began to whir. I had no desire to do a rocky road or some sort of spring themed marshmallow-y cupcake. I wanted to do something different. And then I thought,"What flavors go well with marshmallow?" The answer? sweet potato. The result of an afternoon of experimenting in my kitchen was an extremely sticky, absolutely sinful, spiced Sweet Potato Cupcake with Marshmallow Creme Filling. Oh god. The responses from my friends ranged from "Oh my god, this is by far your best recipe ever" to contented silence because their mouths were full of cupcake. I'm SO happy with this one. The marshmallow creme was a pain in the rear end to work with, but the end result was worth the sticky hands and the insane clean up.


Say hello to my sticky little friends...




Today's kitchen adventure was even more rewarding than yesterday's, and that's saying something. I finished the first draft of my thesis at 3:30 this afternoon--and I was in the need of a little catharsis. I ran to my kitchen and flung open the refrigerator door. I was confronted by a carton of strawberries, which were so gorgeous and ripe and waiting to be baked into a cookie. Thus was the Strawberry Shortcake Cookie born. A regular strawberry shortcake is made by putting whipped cream and fresh strawberries between a pastry or a scone. My cookie is a very soft sugar cookie filled with a whipped pastry cream and fresh strawberries.

I had a hell of a time making the whipped cream, mainly because I don't have a mixer and have to whip the cream by hand. But it was so worth the effort. When I brought the cookies to rehearsal this evening, I watched my friends' eyes grow big and bright as they took their first bites. These are the best cookies I've made to date, I think. And I still have a ton of whipped cream left. I'm thinking that I'll have to make at least another batch. At least.

Strawberry cookies forever!




I'm contributing these amazing little morsels of strawberry goodness to the Strawberry Seduction roundup. Check it out after April 4th!

I'm so happy with these two recipes. Now the question is: will I be able to top them?

Kay

An Apple A Day...

I'm going to blame it on my little sister Katie. It started when I baked an apple pie for Christmas dinner...a pie that soon became an integral part of Katie's every meal for the next week. As soon as the pie was gone, however, I could sense the air of dejection that followed her into the kitchen. It seemed silly to bake another apple pie, especially since I had wanted to bake some fancier New Year's desserts, but I knew I needed to give Katie her daily apple pie fix.

The answer?

Apple Pie Cookies, of course!

The recipe is comprised of a pastry/cookie shell filled with a traditional apple pie filling (loaded with little pieces of crisp granny smith apples) that has been thickened with extra brown sugar. The cookie is filled with lovely fall-type spices: allspice, nutmeg, and, since I'm obsessed with it, tons of cinnamon.

Katie (and the rest of my family) LOVED them. So it's a recipe that I've kept near and dear to my heart these last 2 months.

And then I stumbled upon the "Apple a Day" blog event:

so I thought that now would be the perfect time to whip out the apples and cinnamon and get to work. I can't give away the recipe, so I'm not participating in the event per se, but lots of luck to the ladies and gents who bake up some brain food!

Thusly:

Apple Pie Cookies





Gotta love 'em.

ALSO you should seriously consider checking out my headshot blog, which I'll be updating even more in the next couple of days due to some amazing photo sessions with some truly lovely, amazing people. Click HERE.

Love and Cookies,

Kay

Cookies and Cupcakes and Icing, Oh My!

I was in the kitchen today from 9 am to 7 pm, just working on two batches of cupcakes. I think I might be insane. Especially because I was in the kitchen all night working on carrot cake cookies.

Why have I been so insane? Well, I had a ton of carrots left over from last week, when I made soup for a sick friend, and I didn't want them to go bad. And I wasn't in the mood for baking a cake, so carrot cake cookies seemed like the best way to go.

I pretty much modified my basic sugar cookie recipe by increasing the amount of brown sugar and adding a bunch of lovely spices (like cinnamon and cardamom), and then mixing up a batch of cinnamon cream cheese frosting and sandwiching it between two cookies. Beautiful.

This morning, I broke open my new set of cake decorating tools and made my carrot cake cookies legit--and then, with the leftover icing, I decorated some sugar cookies.

After that, I got my Buck's Fizz Cupcakes started. Tomorrow I'm doing a cake tasting to decide on the recipe that I will use, so today I spent my 10 hours in the kitchen making custards and cupcakes and frostings, and praying that something would come out right.

The two versions I ended up with are Orange Custard filled Champagne Cupcakes with Orange Buttercream Frosting and Champagne Custard filled Orange Buttermilk Cupcakes with Champagne Buttercream frosting. My roommates keep eying the cupcakes as they walk into the kitchen...I'm excited to see what my friends think tomorrow.

And now, the photos:







Champagne Cupcakes with Orange Filling







Orange Buttermilk Cupcakes with Champagne Filling




And my lovely sous-chef, Frida (who helped me eat the leftover carrots)

Kay

Bad Days and Good Cookies

When I woke up yesterday, I knew it was going to be one of those days. And it was. I went to a fairly pointless class (which required a ride to campus that was longer than the class itself), was turned down for a photography job because i'm overqualified (someone explain that to me, please), didn't get a babysitting gig because they need someone who can commit to more than a year, and couldn't manage to do a single productive thing because things just kept coming up. One top of that, I had a nightmare that was so horrible that I was almost afraid to go back to sleep last night.

When I came home, I was frustrated. I don't know why it happens this way, but whenever I'm having one of those days, I end up baking my Better Than Chocolate Chip muffins. Maybe it's because they're my signature recipe--the first one that I ever really fell in love with and one that I have committed to memory and can probably put together in my sleep. (Although yesterday I decided to at least change it up a little by making them Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Coffeecake muffins, topped off with a pinch of nutmeg...delectable!)

It took me maybe 30 minutes total to get a batch thrown together, and, while that was a really nice bit of kitchen based meditation, it wasn't enough. So I decided to make another cookie recipe.

I wanted to do something different...Not something that anyone can do or anyone would even have thought of doing. I have no idea how or why this recipe came to me, but when it did, it hit me like a ton of bricks, or at least several pounds of packed brown sugar: Boston Cream Pie Cookies! How perfect is that? All of the glory of a Boston Cream Pie--Vanilla custard, chocolate glaze, cakey goodness--captured in a portable cookie form. Like my Apple Pie Cookies, to which my sister Katie is addicted, the Boston Cream Pie Cookie is a piece of inspired insanity.

Behold:





I had far too much fun making these. Especially since I spent some time at Target yesterday searching for a double boiler, and was able to use it to make the chocolate glaze.

And I love my roommates/official taste testers. They make baking an adventure, because the moment between the exclamations about how good the house smells and the first bite is pretty much all the excitement I need in life.

Kay