Luz, Emma, Cat, Chris, and Rubio

Yesterday was Cat's birthday. Since I love her, I decided to make her a cake. And since I forgot Dani's half birthday, I allowed her to dictate what cake would be created for Cat's special day. With virtually no hesitation she landed on zucchini chocolate cake.
Yes. Zucchini cake. Open minded person that I am, I agreed that we could bring this cake dream of hers to fruition. We trekked through the rain to Trader Joe's, purchased our weight in beer, chocolate, and cucumbers and returned to my abode to commence the baking.

It was only once we had arrived home and loaded all the alcohol into the fridge that we realized we were missing the most crucial ingredient: zucchini. When I gently proposed making a non-zucchini cake, Dani lost her shit. In a frantic effort to avoid a full-on temper tantrum, I quickly suggested that we go up to 24th street to purchase a zucchini. Her face brightened immediately, and we set out to obtain the key ingredient.

Dani's mom kindly supplied us with this recipe from joyofbaking.com, with a few adjustments. We also used a springform pan rather than a loaf pan to maximize cake-like-ness.

Chocolate zucchini cake with weird but bomb frosting

* 1 1/2 cups shredded raw zucchini
* 1 cup flour
* 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 tsp baking powder
* 1/4 tsp salt
* dash of cinnamon
* 1/2 cup butter, melted (original calls for canola oil)
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 2 eggies
* 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350˚. Grease a springform pan, or another round cake pan.

Grate the zucchini and set aside. Mix flour, bp, bs, salt, cocoa powder and cinnamon. Mix the sugars with the melted butter. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Add the zucchini. Slowly add the flour mixture and stir until all is combined and batter-like.

Pour batter into the greased pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. (If you do use a loaf pan, increase baking time to about 50 minutes).














Next came the frosting. I must give full credit to Dani for this magnificent experiment. It went something like this:

* 4 oz baking chocolate
*1/4 cup butter
* 1 1/3 cup baker's sugar
* 1 tsp vanilla
* pinch of salt
* 1/2 cup sour cream or creme fraiche

Melt baking chocolate with butter in a double boiler. Add 1/3 cup sugar (preferably baker's sugar) to the mixture. Remove from heat and let cool. Add the rest of the sugar, the vanilla and salt and mix well. Once mixture is fully cooled, stir in the sour cream. All we had on hand was European style sour cream, which is essentially creme fraiche, and I must say no one was complaining as we scooped gobs of extra frosting straight into our mouths.














When all was frosted and done, I believe everyone involved appreciated Dani's (mildly temperamental) adamant insistence on zucchini cake, myself included.

I got a dollar

Buckwheat flour. I bought some earlier this year to make a cake, which turned out to be almost inedibly dry (although otherwise delicious), and have not since been able to find a use for the leftover flour. Until today.

I awoke with a hangover craving for french toast. Sadly, we had no good FT bread, so I turned to plan B. Pancakes. The slightly-lamer-than-french-toast-but-still-sweetish breakfast food. I had seen a recipe on foodnetwork.com for buckwheat pancakes previously and been intrigued, so I decided to just do it. I switched up the original recipe a tad. It called for only 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, but I found the batter too runny so I added about 1/4 cup more. I also had no baking powder, so I added extra baking soda and was not disappointed at the fluffy-factor of the pancakes. The choice to use golden syrup was somewhat questionable. Honey or brown sugar would have probably been better incorporated into the whole batter mixture, but the clumpy thickness of golden syrup contributed to some especially sweet bites in a few lucky pancakes. Fa sho.

Buckwheat pancakes
(Adapted from "Blueberry Buckwheat Pancake" recipe by Ellie Krieger)

* 3/4 cup buckwheat flour
* just under 1 cup whole wheat flour
* pinch of salt
* 2 tsp baking soda
* 2/3 cup milk
* 1 cup buttermilk*
* 2 eggs
* 1 tbsp golden syrup (or honey or sugar)
* 2 tbsp canola oil
* butter for the pan

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. In a separate bowl (or liquid measuring cup) mix the milk, buttermilk, eggs, oil and syrup or honey. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Some lumps will remain and this is OK.

Heat a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Melt in the butter, then ladle the batter into the pan. Even with the extra flour, the pancakes tended to spread out a good amount, so no need to add huge amounts of batter for each pancake. Let them cook for about 2-3 minutes, then flip. Let cook on the other side for about a minute. Consume with maple syrup and/or cream cheese and/or jam and or nothing.














Yes I am obsessed with cream cheese and it is good on everything.

*Note: if you don't have buttermilk (why would you), you can easily make it by adding a tablespoon of white vinegar or lemon juice to a cup of milk

Melted

Earlier this week I opened my fridge to find a brick of cheese staring back at me from the top shelf. And not just any cheese. Wilma had purchased a six pound block of Dubliner sharp cheddar. Her reasoning was somewhat logical - she planned to give half to Dani, who shares our love of/obsession with Dubliner cheese. I, of course, had no intention of allowing more than a few slices of the cheese leave my sight by any route aside from consumption by me. However, again I was foiled and the next day the cheese brick had been substantially diminished, no doubt with help from both Wilma and Dani.

Today I took matters into my own hand. If I can't have all the cheese, no one will have any. I determined to transform the cheese into a baked good. Luckily, my Big Book of Baking provided me with the perfect solution: Cheese and mustard scones. All it required was some serious grating and mixing and the scones became a reality. An extra cheesy reality, obviously. The scones were subsequently devoured by members of my mother's posse. All were highly appreciative and they even so generously left a piece of a scone for me to try. Heated up, it was sublime.

Cheese and Mustard Scones
(adapted from the Big Book and Baking)

* 4 tbsp butter
* 1 1/2 cup flour
* 3 tsp baking powder
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 1/2 (or more...) cups grated sharp cheddar cheese (recommended - Dubliner. Derr)
* 1 tsp mustard powder
* 2/3 cup milk, and some extra for brushing on top
* pepper/sesame seeds

Preheat oven to 425˚.

Mix flour, b.p. and salt. Cut butter into small pieces, then crumble it into the flour mixture with hands (the original recipe says to do this with fingertips, but I am too impatient for such delicateness, so I tend to just smoosh the butter into the dry ingredients and then break up the mixture into crumb-like pieces).

Stir in the cheese (in the end I used about 2 cups grated) and mustard powder. I used only one tsp as called for, but a tad more mustard probably would not hurt. Add the milk and stir until mixture becomes a soft dough. Lightly flour a surface for the dough. Shape the dough on the surface into a circle, about 1 inch tall. Cut into 8 wedges. Brush wedge with milk. Add some pepper on top, or not. We had no sesame seeds, but I reckon these would top off (literally. haha.) the scones nicely as well.














Place the wedges on a lightly greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes until puffed and golden brown and flakily glorious. Eat with cheese, cream cheese, mustard, butter, or nothing.

Snicker snicker

On Wednesday I realized that I had never made snickerdoodles. My first response upon this epiphany was "who cares?" But, in an attempt to resist my typical desire to stick with something familiar that I make all the time, I decided to go for it. I was bored. I was uninspired. What other cookie could so perfectly complement these emotions?

And so commenced The Great Snickerdoodle Adventure (eh, still just sounds like a bad joke.)

I referred to a recipe from The Cookie and Biscuit Bible by Catherine Atkinson (I have to cite this stuff, right?), a magnificent book gifted to me by a magnificent Camila.

The original recipe called for chopped walnuts, which I replaced with some ground almonds. I also substituted nutmeg for some of the cinnamon, as I ran out of cinnamon. In conclusion, they would have been better with no nuts at all. Duh.

Snickerdoodlezzzzzz
* 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), room temp
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1 tsp vanilla
* 2 eggs
* 1/4 cup milk
* 3 1/2 cups flour
* 1 tsp baking soda
* 1/4 cup ground almonds
topping:
* 5 tbsp sugar
* 1 tbsp cinnamon
* 1 tbsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375˚.

Cream the butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and milk. Add flour and baking soda and mix.
Mix in the almonds/walnuts/skip this step until it resembles this:















For the topping, mix the sugar and cinnamon/nutmeg in a shallow dish. Roll the dough into balls and roll them in the cinnamon sugar. I savvied up slightly after the first round of cookie shaping and rolling and took a more aggressive approach to coating the cookies. I found the really smashing them into the cinnamon sugar and attacking all sides (yes. sides of a ball.) in order to achieve optimal coating. Needless to say, the second batch was infinitely more... coated.














Place and cookies on a lightly greased cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Actually, flatten more than slightly as they don't really do any flattening on their own. For round 1 I ended up opening the oven mid-bake and pressing all the cookies down with the back on my wooden spoon in order to make them sufficiently flat. I would not recommend following this step. Those cookies turned out looking pretty ugly.














Bake in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes. In an effort to be less of a control freak I did not time the baking process, but I would caution that the cookies were a bit dry at the end, so underbaking is advisable.














Cooling on a rack is unnecessary, but if your mother is lurking nearby it is generally a good idea to use the rack in order to avoid being nagged.

Lastly, unload as many of these as you can on your friend(s) so you don't end up stuck with 30 mediocre cookies.


Or make tea and serve them to your parents.












Addendum: After writing this, I proceeded to go downstairs and finish the remaining cookies. I can't say for certain if this is a reflection on snickerdoodles or on me, but make of it what you will.

Dani made me

The title of this post is a phrase I often employ. In this instance, it has a double reference - firstly, yes, Dani made me create this web-based outlet for my food/writing obsession. Secondly - cookies. She made me. To be fair, I was the one who ultimately made the suggestion to make peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies yesterday afternoon, but I would never have actually done it if she hadn't made the proposal earlier in the week, and vehemently affirmed that we should make them following my mere passing idea. Honestly, when do I NOT inquire whether or not we should make cookies? I do not recall such a day. It is her generally well completed job to assure me that no, we should not make cookies. But yesterday she failed me. Needless to say, the most excellent, chewy, borderline painfully sweet cookies were produced yesterday afternoon in my (by my I mean my father's) kitchen.
Here's how:

* 2 sticks of butter. Room temp. If you don't have a microwave or patience (I possess neither), I find holding the sticks of butter just above a low flame on the stove for about a minute, or until your fingers can't take it anymore (what, I never said the process would be safe).
* 1 cup brown suger
* 1/2 cup white sugar. Dani pointed out that most chocolate chip cookie recipes call for 3/4 cups of each kind of sugar. This is incorrect.
* 2 eggs. The bigger the better.
* 2 tsp vanilla. The more the merrier.
* 2 cups all purpose flour. For puffier, less chewy and delicious cookies you can add another 1/4 cup or so of flour.
* 2 tsp baking soda
* 1 tsp salt
* 1 cup (or just over) rolled oats
* peanut butter. I never really measure in this step. I would say we added about 1/3 of a jar into this batch and it could have easily handled more.
* 1 bag chocolate chips. I say a whole bag because either a whole bag will go in and the cookies will be extra chocolate chippy and divine, or, more likely, some will be lost to the people helping you bake who insist on feasting upon the plain chips rather than patiently waiting for the cookies to come out but I won't mention any names.

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F.

Beat up the butter. Seriously, do this first to ensure that creaming the butter and sugar together is not a traumatizing experience. You can either use an electric apparatus or wooden spoon (the latter is far more gangster). Mix butter until it is soft and fluffy, then add both sugars and cream them together until extra soft and fluffy. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well.

If you like to use more bowls then necessary, or have a pesky friend who insists of having a task to do, you are free to mix the dry ingredients separately. However, it is completely unnecessary. You can instead simply add the flour, baking soda and salt to the mixture and combine. Try to avoid getting to excited and coating your counter, your baking assistant, and yourself in flour. It happens, though.

Once the dough is dough-like, add the oats and combine. Then, the pb. Again, be free in this step. Finally, pour in all the chocolate chips, and give the whole thing one final, all encompassing stir.

Shaping and sizing the cookies is another step in which I will give full discretion to the reader. This is a very important decision, as some will only eat tiny, lame cookies, and others much prefer I cookie that, once devoured, actually allows you to feel like you have eaten something delicious and gained a few pounds. Either way is fine. Place the balls of dough, big or small, on a cookie sheet (there should be enough for about 4 sheets total, accounting for dough consumption). Put the sheet(s) in the oven and bake for 8-12 minutes, depending on how well done or practically raw and mind blowing you like your cookies.

Yum.