SMS: Snickerdoodles!

This week's SMS was chosen by Spike of Spike Bakes: snickerdoodles! It's been a while since I've made snickerdoodles and I like them a lot, so I was happy to make them again. Plus, you can't really beat the portability of cookies so I knew these would be easy to share!

In my ongoing quest to avoid baking the recipes for my baking groups at the last minute, I planned to make these on Friday - two whole days in advance. It must be some kind of record for me! I read through the recipe and saw that, like most (all?) of the other cookie recipes we've tried from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book, this one calls for chilling the dough for an hour before baking. No problem - I threw the dough together (it's a simple recipe) and stuck it in the fridge before Shane and I headed out to see Julie and Julia!!

(As an aside, if you haven't seen Julie and Julia, I highly recommend it. I truly enjoyed it, particularly the storyline involving Meryl Streep as Julia Child. I thought Meryl did an amazing job portraying Julia, so good that I found it easy to forget I wasn't actually watching Julia. The movie inspired me to learn more about Julia. I'd borrowed her book, My Life in France, from my library recently and now I can't wait to curl up and dig in! The storyline about Julie was fun too. I found her very relatable, though just not as charming as Julia. This is one movie I'm looking forward to seeing again when it comes to DVD!)

When we got back from the movie, I removed the cookie dough from the fridge and let it sit on the counter for a while until it softened enough that I could work with it. Forming the dough into balls and rolling them in the cinnamon sugar mixture was fun and it made me happy to know that my cookies would have a cinnamon sugar coating when they emerged from the oven because in my world everything is better with more sugar :) By the time I finished getting the cookies onto the baking sheets, the dough was pretty soft but I was too impatient to chill them again before baking. I wasn't sure if they'd retain their shape or would spread a ton in the oven.

Luckily, after 12 minutes in the oven, they were perfect - wonderfully chewy and delicious! I shared some with our neighbors, who also enjoyed them! Thanks to Spike for a terrific pick this week! You can find the recipe on her blog and you can see all of this week's cookies by visiting the SMS site.

Cheesecake Ice Cream

One of my favorite things about being able to make ice cream at home is trying new flavors I wouldn't normally order if we went out for ice cream. I can make a really small batch at home so if I don't like it there's not much to throw out and I don't feel as guilty. Recently I tried this cheesecake ice cream from The Perfect Scoop. The recipe is super simple - it's not custard-based so no egg yolks to temper and cook and thus no worries about scrambled eggs! The only change I made to the recipe was to fold some crumbled graham crackers into the ice cream after I churned it. I thought the ice cream was just ok on the first day I made it. It was a bit too tangy for me. However, over the course of the next few days, the flavor seemed to mellow out and I really began to enjoy the cheesecake ice cream. I was glad I added the graham crackers because those were definitely my favorite bites! I will be making this again and perhaps trying the idea from the book to pair it with blueberry sauce - yum!

Cheesecake Ice Cream

adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

8 ounces cream cheese

zest of 1 lemon

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup half and half

2/3 cup sugar

pinch of salt

4 graham crackers (1 sheet), coarsely crushed (optional)

Cut the cream cheese into small pieces and transfer to a food processor or blender. Add the lemon zest, sour cream, half and half, sugar and salt to the machine and puree until smooth.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. If using the graham crackers, gently fold them into the ice cream after it finishes churning.

Makes about 3 cups.

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with Seven Minute Frosting

I was reading this post tonight and it got me thinking. Whenever we're invited to a party or get together, I always try to ask what I can bring. I usually volunteer to bake something since I love making treats and sharing them with others. At the time (usually weeks or at least one week in advance of the event), I'm really excited. Fast forward a few days and I start stressing about exactly what type of baked good I should make. Does the event call for cake, cupcakes, pie, tarts, cookies, etc.? I spend so much time thinking about all of the options, and failing to make any decisions, that I wind up leaving myself very little time to actually bake. It's a ridiculously bad habit and one I've recognized for a while now. I'm a procrastinator in general, though, so I don't know how much hope there is for me to change my ways.

I made these cupcakes to take to a party last weekend and of course found myself baking them just a few hours before we needed to leave the house. Fortunately, the recipe is pretty much foolproof. No butter to bring to room temperature and just one bowl to mix all of the ingredients. My only complaint about the batter is that it's fairly runny, which made it difficult to transfer to the tins. Once baked though, the cupcakes are incredibly moist and quite delicious!

I'd originally planned to make buttercream frosting for the cupcakes but when I saw the seven minute frosting in the book and remembered all of the egg whites in my freezer, I changed gears. I love that this frosting doesn't contain a pound of butter and yet is still tasty. The marshmallow frosting is just sweet enough and paired wonderfully with the cupcakes. I loved the contrast of the dark cupcakes with the bright white frosting. Please note that the recipe below makes a TON of frosting. I frosted all 24 of my cupcakes and didn't even make a dent in it. I could probably have made 1/4 of the recipe and I still would have had leftovers.

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes with Seven Minute Frosting

from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes

Cupcakes

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup buttermilk

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3/4 cup warm water

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line two 12-cup muffin tins with paper liners.

With an electric mixer on medium speed, beat flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Reduce speed to low and add the eggs, buttermilk, oil, vanilla extract and water. Beat until all ingredients are combined and smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each about two-thirds full. Bake, rotating muffin tins halfway through, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool for 10 minutes before turning the cupcakes out onto the racks to cool completely.

Makes 18-24 cupcakes (the recipe says it yields 18 but I got 24)

Frosting

1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2/3 cup water

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

6 large egg whites, at room temperature

Combine 1 1/2 cups sugar, water and corn syrup in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Continue boiling, without stirring, until syrup reaches 230 F.

Meanwhile, in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whisk egg whites on medium-high until soft peaks form. With mixer running, add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar, beating to combine.

As soon as sugar syrup reaches 230 F, remove from heat. With mixer on medium-low, pour the syrup down the side of the mixer bowl in a slow, steady stream. Raise speed to medium-high and whisk until mixture is completely cool and stiff peaks form, about 7 minutes.

Makes 8 cups

TWD: Banana Bundt Cake!

This week's TWD was chosen by the fabulous Mary of The Food Librarian: banana bundt cake! To be honest, I'm not sure I'd ever noticed this recipe on my many flips through Dorie's book. I wasn't surprised at all that Mary chose it though because she's sort of known for her love of bundt cakes :) I definitely recommend you visit her site and check out all the gorgeous photos and the many bundt cakes she's tried!

I rarely buy bananas so I didn't have any hanging around to make this cake. Lucky for me, my neighbor buys tons of bananas for her toddler and always offers them to me when they become overripe (in exchange, I generally share whatever I make with them with her family). The timing couldn't have been more perfect when she gave me 2 very ripe bananas late last week! I decided to halve the recipe and use my mini bundt pan.

The recipe for the cake is both easy and familiar - cream the butter and sugar, add egg/vanilla, and alternate dry ingredients with wet. The "wet" ingredient in the recipe is sour cream, which I really love using in baking. As I distributed the batter among the wells of the pan, I made a real effort not to overfill them because I knew exactly what would happen if I did! A few minutes into baking I turned on the oven light and saw this:

Panic ensued, but I'm happy to report that's about as bad as things got. All six mini bundts were successfully baked (in about 22 minutes) and removed from the pan. I decided to just dust them with some confectioner's sugar instead of doing a glaze. This is a terrific cake! It's incredibly moist and soft. That said, I think I might have enjoyed the batter just as much (if not more!) than the cake. After filling my mini bundt pan I had some batter left over and while I could probably have made a mini loaf with it, I found myself eating a ton of it straight from the bowl! Yum!

Many thanks to Mary for hosting this week! She'll post the recipe on her site if you want to give it a shot and, as always, head over to TWD to see how the others bakers fared.

Lemon-Rosemary Chicken Kebabs

Happy Monday! I thought I'd start this week off by posting a quick and easy summer dinner recipe. I am growing a number of herbs on my back deck this summer and my rosemary plant is thriving so I've had to search out lots of recipes to make use of all of the delicious rosemary! (On that note, my basil has started to look quite sickly lately - the plant has a ton of leaves but they are very small and have turned from green to almost yellow. Thoughts? The plant gets tons of sun so I know that isn't the problem.)

I just picked up a few nonstick skewers so I was excited to test them out with this recipe for chicken kebabs. The chicken is marinated in a combination of lemon juice/zest, water, rosemary and salt for 20 minutes then tossed with some oil, garlic and pepper before grilling. I made these kebabs on a rainy day so I cooked them inside on a grill pan. I'm sure they would have developed even more smoky flavor had I made them outside, but they were still terrific! The chicken was juicy and best of all, cooked very quickly because the pieces were nice and small. I threaded some red onion on the skewers with the chicken and served it all over couscous.

Lemon-Rosemary Chicken Kebabs

from goodLife {eats} (as seen on Ezra Pound Cake)

Juice of 1 large lemon plus water to equal 2 cups liquid

Zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1/4 cup fresh, chopped rosemary

2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1/8 teaspoon pepper

In a small microwave-safe bowl, combine the lemon juice, water, lemon zest, rosemary, and kosher salt. Bring mixture to a boil in the microwave, about 1-2 minutes on full power. Stir mixture until salt is dissolved, and allow it to steep for 20 minutes.

Cut chicken into 1 1/2-inch chunks. Place it in a bowl or baking dish, and add the lemon juice mixture, letting the chicken soak for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare skewers by soaking in water for 30 minutes (if using wooden skewers), and preheat grill.

Remove chicken from lemon mixture (discard the mixture), and toss with olive oil, garlic and pepper. Thread skewers with the chicken. Sprinkle with fresh rosemary. Grill over medium-high heat until chicken is cooked through. Remove from skewers and serve over a bed of wild rice or couscous.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies!

This week's SMS was chosen by Stephanie of Ice Cream Before Dinner: chewy peanut butter cookies! I don't make peanut butter cookies all that often, but I really enjoy them. I'd actually tried this recipe back in March when I made these cookies to bring to one of Shane's races. They were a big hit then so I figured I'd make them again this weekend.

There were two things that stuck out in my mind from my experience making them in March. First, the dough was pretty sticky so I had trouble flattening it and using the fork to make the trademark peanut butter cookie crosshatch. This time, I had the most success by dusting the top of each cookie with a little flour before flattening and making the crosshatch. Melissa suggests dipping the fork in flour but that didn't work for me.

Second, the recipe calls for baking the cookies 10 minutes. I found that was nowhere near enough time - at 10 minutes, the cookies were bordering on raw in the middle. Having learned my lesson last time, I baked the cookies for 14-15 minutes this time and they were perfect! They were still very chewy and soft with just the right amount of peanut butter flavor.

Thanks to Stephanie for choosing a delicious recipe this week! If you'd like to try the cookies, you can find the recipe here and you can see how everyone else's cookies turned out by visiting the SMS site.

Strawberry Scones

I think it's finally time for me to change my position on scones. When I see them on other blogs or in cookbooks, they always look yummy, but never pull me in the way other treats do. I never feel compelled to get up and make them immediately. I'd seen these strawberry scones on The Food Librarian's site in March and resolved to make them soon. Well "soon" wound up being last week and now I'm kicking myself I didn't try these sooner. They are amazing! They're incredibly tender and the flavor is terrific. They're not overly sweet themselves, but the bites of fruit add just the right sweetness. I did have a little bit of trouble forming the scones. The dough was very crumbly so I wound up adding a bit of extra cream, which did the trick. I'm thinking of trying these again next week with a different fruit - they really do make a great breakfast treat.

Strawberry Scones

from Confessions of a Tart (as seen on The Food Librarian)

1 cup strawberries (or other fruit)

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter, in cubes, slightly softened

2/3 cup half-and-half or cream or cold buttermilk (I used cream)

Topping:

1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

If using larger fruit, cut into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle fruit with 1/2 tablespoon sugar; set aside. Be sure to make the pieces small, or they tend to fall out of the dough. They'll still be plenty prominent in your finished scones.

Combine remaining sugar with flour, baking powder and salt. Add butter to the mixture and cut in using a pastry cutter or 2 knives. Stir in fruit; then add cream/half-and-half/buttermilk all at once. Use rubber spatula to gently stir dough until it holds together.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times to incorporate dry ingredients. Be gentle so you don't break up the berries and don't overwork the dough. Sprinkle dough with flour if it gets sticky.

Press (pat) the dough into a circle 3/4 inch thick. If any berries peek out, push them into dough. Cut circle into 6-8 wedges, then transfer wedges to the cookie sheet, leaving at least 1/2 inch of space between them. Bake 15 minutes.

Sprinkle with sugar and bake 5-10 more minutes or until the tops are beginning to brown and spring back when you push them. (The sprinkling of sugar over the top for the last few minutes of baking creates a simple, sparkly topping.)

Yields 6-8 scones.