I Never Promised You an Organic Garden » food

Best Brownies Ever!

Becky McKimmy — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 05:35:09 +0000

It is official, I made the best brownies ever this week. That includes boxed brownies and restaurant brownies. I tried the Cooks Illustrated brownies earlier this year and was not impressed with how they turned out, so I turned to Alton Brown for a recipe. And let me tell you, I hit the jackpot. These brownies are relatively easy to make, taste very chocolaty, and have a nice fudgey texture.

I did have some trials and tribulation at the beginning because the recipe in Alton’s cookbook, “I’m Just Here for More Food,” has some pretty major typos. I wasted 30 minutes scouring the interwebs for corrections. I finally found a corrected recipe on the Good Eats fan page, and it was worth the wait. I don’t know what the major difference between Alton’s recipe and the Cooks Illustrated recipe was, but I am sure the 2 sticks of butter and 4 eggs didn’t hurt. The use of amazing Equal Exchange baking cocoa gifted to us by our friend Adrienne was definitely a factor as well. I also added a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips to the recipe, but what brownie recipe isn’t better with more chocolate.

These are definitely my new go-to brownies. I didn’t think this day would come, but I have finally found a brownie recipe that I think tastes better than box brownies. Here’s hoping it wasn’t a fluke!

Things I learned from this recipe:

Cookbooks can have typos. It is important to read through the whole recipe at the beginning of the process to catch them.
Equal Exchange cocoa is pretty tasty. It hasn’t passed the fudge test yet, so I haven’t decided if it will replace my Penzey’s cocoa.
Leaving brownies SLIGHTLY under cooked means that the edges are all hard and crusty but the middle is still finger food.

Butter Bomb

Becky McKimmy — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:11:26 +0000

Buoyed by my baking success earlier this week, I decided to make chocolate chocolate chip bread for the potluck at church. I have made this recipe before in muffin form, so I didn’t expect any problems. Unfortunately, I underestimated my mess making abilities.

The recipe calls for 1 stick of butter melted, so I popped it in the microwave, like I have done 100 times, to melt the butter. About 30 seconds in, I heard a bang and turned to see that the unmelted half of the butter had exploded all over the inside of the microwave.

And, in this case exploded is not too strong of a word. There was literally butter all over the inside of the microwave including under the rotating tray. It was quite impressive. It took me 15 minutes to clean out the inside of the microwave so I could complete the melting process.

I did, however, learn a valuable lesson for future butter melting: Do not melt a whole stick of butter all at once on high in the microwave. From now on, I will use short burst at about half power. On the bright side, our microwave is now quite clean.

Quick Cinnamon Buns with Buttermilk Icing

Becky McKimmy — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 21:17:10 +0000

This week’s baking went really well. I made Quick Cinnamon Buns with Buttermilk Icing from Cooks Illustrated and they were delicious!! They were biscuit style buns, so they didn’t have to rise like traditional cinnamon buns. Hence, the “quick” in the name.

You make the buns by spreading the dough out on the counter in a rectangle and putting a layer of cinnamon and clove filling on top. Then you roll the dough into a log and cut it into eight equal pieces. Mixing the dough together was a snap, but things got more complicated when it came time to knead and spread the dough. My dough was a little wet, and it kept sticking to my hands and the counter. I was pretty frustrated for most of the process, and I kept having to add more flour. When it came time to roll the dough into a log, I ended up with a stretched out uneven log that had a couple holes in it from where the dough had stuck to the counter.

Needless to say, my buns did not look very pretty once I got them all into the pan, but a strange thing happened. I turned around to put something away, and when I came back, the baking-fairy had magically massaged the buns into looking like real cinnamon rolls. I am pretty sure this is cheating, but what can you do when the baking-fairy makes an unexpected visit.

I made a super rich buttermilk glaze to go on top, and we ate them fresh out of the oven. They were amazing!! They were still good two days later when we had a second round warmed for breakfast. This is a recipe I will be repeating!

Things I learned from this recipe:

Sticky dough is one of the most frustrating things in the kitchen.
The baking-fairy can’t keep from “fixing” your baked goods. You must keep an eye on him at all times.
Clove is not as strong as it smells. I was really concerned that the cinnamon buns would taste like clove buns because they smelled very strongly of clove, but after baking they had a really pleasant cinnamon flavor.
Anything that basically fries in 4 tablespoons of butter while it bakes is going to taste like heaven!

Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie Bars

Becky McKimmy — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:13:52 +0000

I just realized the week is almost over, and I never blogged about my baking adventure this week. I did, however, remember to bake so the important bases are covered. Since Matt is out of town this week, and I wanted to try and use ingredients we had on hand, I decided to go the easy route and make Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie Bars. They are very similar in prep to chocolate chip cookies, but require a few extra ingredients and turned out much thicker and cakier than my cookies ever do. With Matt being gone, I am also missing our normal camera so, I had to use our old point and shoot. Please forgive the subpar photos of my food.

This was officially my first no-mistakes baking experience. I followed the recipe correctly, used all the correct ingredients, didn’t make a huge mess, didn’t hurt myself, and my cookie bars turned out beautifully. Of course some of this can be chalked up to the fact that this was a simple recipe that I have come close to making in the past, but the real trick was paying attention to what I was doing.

After my brownie debacle a few weeks back, I double checked that I had enough of every ingredient before I started, read through the whole recipe before I mixed anything, and only got out the measuring cups and spoons I needed. It definitely paid off. I still had the sense of anxiety as I mixed the ingredients but because I took the time to really pay attention to what I was doing, the cookie bars turned out really well. Here’s hoping I learned something!

Things I learned from this recipe:

Read the recipe all the way through before you begin. This really cuts down on surprises
Despite what Matt says, you don’t have to roast pecans before you use them in baked goods to have them taste good.
I actually can bake unsupervised if I take the time to pay attention to what I am doing.
Baking is a great distraction.

Pound Cake Perfection

Becky McKimmy — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 02:23:40 +0000

This week’s baking adventure went a lot better than the brownies from last week. I made Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Pound Cake, and it really did turn out nearly perfect. The flavor, crumb, and crust all turned out as they should. Needless to say I was very excited. I’ve never made pound cake before, so I don’t know how it typically rates on the difficulty scale, but I thought it was pretty easy. I took the finished cake to Loops of Love on Tuesday, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. It was a lot of fun to be able to share something I made with all my friends.

I did have one snafu or near snafu. I got to the part of the recipe where you pour the batter into the pan to bake, and I tasted the batter. It tasted nice and buttery but still tasted like it was missing something. That is when I realized I had forgotten to add the salt. Luckily I still had time to add the salt and save the cake, but I think it would have been even better if I had added it at the beginning of the process. In terms of attention to detail this is a minor mistake and definitely better than last week, but I still have some work to do.

Things I learned from this recipe:

Salt is very important to the flavor of baked goods, even sweet items.
Baking dishes that call for extra egg yolks leaves you with a lot of egg whites to find a use for. Any suggestions?
We need to get a bread pan that isn’t made of stoneware so I can actually use it without having my skin crawl.

Botched Brownies

Becky McKimmy — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:31:44 +0000

I tried my hand at baking brownies from scratch this evening unsupervised, and It definitely felt like my first baking fail. I was attempting to make Cooks Illustrated’s Chewy Brownies. I have had problems with making box brownies in the past, and it seems my bad luck has followed me into the world of from-scratch baking. From the beginning things went wrong:

I used the wrong measuring cup and added a 1/4 cup of cocoa powder instead of the 1/3 cup the recipe called for and didn’t notice until it was too late to add more. I tried to add some anyway.
Once I was well past the point of no return, I realized that I was about 3/4 of a cup short on sugar. After an “emergency” phone call to Matt at his meeting, I substituted powdered sugar for the missing granulated sugar. Who knows what that has done to the texture of the brownies
The bowl I selected was not quite big enough for all my ingredients so by the end I was spilling quite a bit of flour over the edges as I mixed. My shirt is now a lighter shade of blue.
I nearly put in two time more salt than the recipe called for. Just before I dumped it in, I realized I was supposed to add 3/4 of a TEASPOON and not a 3/4 of a tablespoon.
The batter itself tasted pretty bitter before I poured it in the pan. I don’t know if that is because of the espresso the recipe called for, or because I didn’t use the right sugar, or because I added more cocoa at the last minute. But I do know it didn’t taste anything like the box brownie mix I am used to.
When I removed the brownies from the pan using the aluminum foil sling, the whole thing buckled and created a large crack down the middle of the brownies.

There was one bright point in the process, however. One of the first steps was to chop the unsweetened chocolate very finely so it could melt in the hot water, and that went decidedly well. Cooks Illustrated had simple instructions for basically shaving the chocolate with a serrated knife, and it worked beautifully.

In the end the brownies turned out okay. The ones in the middle are really rich and fudgy, while the ones around the edges are slightly over baked. There isn’t a lot of chocolate flavor from the brownies themselves, but the bittersweet chocolate chunks and semisweet chocolate chips baked into them help. You also can’t taste the espresso like I thought you might be able to before I baked them. It just adds some complexity.

Things I learned from this recipe:

Attention to detail is really important when you are baking. You really have to read the recipe thoroughly and pay attention to which measuring cup you are using.
Unsweetened chocolate really tastes pretty nasty.
Use the biggest bowl you have on hand… always.
Things taste different once they have been baked. Sometimes yucky flavors go away.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Becky McKimmy — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:08:07 +0000

For this week’s baking adventure, I made chocolate chip cookies. Now before everyone starts protesting that anyone can make chocolate chip cookies and surely I have made them before, these were not just any chocolate chip cookies. These were Cooks Illustrated’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, which roughly translates to amazingly tasty chocolate chip cookies with a lot of complicated steps added in. Not only that, but I had the added complication of trying to bake while Matt simultaneously made salsa. This means I had a lot less space than normal, and Matt wasn’t as readily available to grab things for me or check my progress. Both of us trying to use the kitchen at the same time is not something I would enjoy repeating.

But back to the complicated steps. This recipe adds a rich carmel flavor to the cookies through browning the butter, which is something I have never even thought to try. It was not exceptionally difficult just time consuming and precise. In the end, my buttered turned out nicely browned. I did have to adapt the swirl-the-pan-on-the-burner method to be the stir-browning-butter-with-a-rubber-spatula method, because I couldn’t stand the scraping sound of the pan on the burner. According to the recipe, to get a chewy texture and enhance the flavor of the sugar, I also had to repeat a time consuming whisk for 30 seconds, rest for 3 minutes, whisk for 30 seconds cycle 3 times. This really got tedious, and if Matt hadn’t been there to hold me accountable, I might have skipped some of the cycles.

In the end, my cookies did have an amazing depth of flavor and a ton of chocolate chips. However, despite all my whisking, the cookies still turned out flat instead of the cakey, chewy cookies you see in the recipe picture. Part of this maybe due to the fact that I chose to make smaller cookies than the recipe called for, but seriously I am not making a whole batch of cookies only to get 16 cookies. The flat cookie seems to be my curse, but I will keep trying. If you want to sample some of my cookies, they will be available at the Richmond Church of the Brethren Ice Cream Social and Game Night September 8 at 7pm. Come join us!

Things I learned from this recipe:

How to brown butter. It is not nearly as hard as it sounds.
I am just cursed with flat cookies.
The better the cookie tastes, the longer it takes to make.
Baking while someone else is making salsa in the same kitchen is not fun.

Meringue Cookies

Becky McKimmy — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 02:47:01 +0000

My baking this week was directed much more by ingredients on hand (or not on hand) than a desire to make any particular dish. We were very low on flour and a few other key ingredients. It also just so happened that I wanted to share my cookies with a group of friends, one of which is gluten intolerant. So meringue cookies were the perfect solution.

In terms of preparation and ingredients, this was the simplest things I have tired baking so far. They only have 6 ingredients and the prep time is very quick. I even added chocolate chips to 2/3 of the batch. The real trick came when I had to put the meringue in a piping bag to squeeze out in cookie form. The first 1/3 of the batch came out looking perfect and fluffy. The second 2/3 with chocolate didn’t look quite so nice, and I really struggled with keeping the meringue from coming out of the top of the bag.

As my mother-in-law can attest, I am a total failure with a piping bag. I had more meringue on my hands and the floor than on the cookie sheet at one point. Thankfully the cookies themselves turned out pretty well. They were crisp and fluffy like honest to goodness meringue. They even tasted so good that, despite my objections, my friend who is allergic to eggs ate one. (He survived).

Things I learned from this recipe:

Meringue is very messy.
Piping bags are impossible to use without making a mess.
Separating eggs is best done by hand and with farm-fresh eggs.

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Muffins

Becky McKimmy — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 02:16:47 +0000

It is only the second week of my baking challenge, and I am already breaking the rules I created. I had a really strong craving for chocolate-chocolate chip muffins this week, but alas Cooks Illustrated doesn’t have a recipe for them. So, instead of making one of the Cooks Illustrated recipes like I was supposed to, I pull out another favorite in our house: ”I’m Just Here For More Food” by Alton Brown. To make up for my transgression, I did bake a batch of granola bars too, though.

But back to the muffins. These muffins weren’t anything like the muffins I grew up making. For starters they didn’t come from a box. They required you combine all the ingredients in Alton’s Muffin Method, which is slightly strange. Alton’s wet ingredients include sugar, melted butter, eggs, milk, and vanilla, which when combined resulted in a lumpy, clumpy mess. The cold milk quickly re-solidified the melted butter, which meant it did not mix well with the sugar. Matt said mixing all the wet ingredients other than the butter first and then adding the butter might result in a more cohesive mixture. But I was following Alton’s instructions…

Next, Alton suggests measuring all the dry goods by weight, so instead of getting out my trusty measuring cups and spoons, I used Matt’s kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients. It went surprisingly well ,and I only poured a little bit of flour on the counter.

The real challenge with this recipe came when it was time to remove the muffins from the pan. They were HUGE, and the tops spread out all over the place. That made it nearly impossible to loosen the muffins from the muffin pan, and I had to fight to get the muffins out without removing the tops first. A few didn’t look so pretty when I was done. But all the trials and tribulations a side, those muffins tasted amazing!!! They were super chocolaty and the texture was just right. No cupcake-muffins here.

Things I learned from this recipe:

Cold milk re-solidifies melted butter… quickly.
Muffin pan liners are your friend!
The bag of organic chocolate chips has a lot fewer chips than the regular kind.
Baking from scratch takes a long time and makes you late for work.
Homemade chocolate-chocolate chip muffins do indeed taste better than the ones they don’t carry at the local Starbucks.

Peach Cake

Becky McKimmy — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:11:58 +0000

I decided to start my baking adventure with a peach cake from the July/August 2011 Cooks Illustrated. Peaches are in season right now, and we have a couple local sources so it seemed like a good place to start. For a first dish this turned out to be a little bit more complicated and time consuming than I had hoped, but I have to say I am pleased with how the cake turned out.

First I had to pit and slice 2 and 1/2 pounds of peaches, then I had to roast most of them to get rid of the extra juices. And let me just say, juicy peaches are slippery. We are lucky I still have all my fingers after that experience. This part of the process was also very time consuming. Once I had the peaches processed they had to roast for 25 minutes then cool to room temperature for 30 minutes. But being the good multitaskers we are, Matt and I took this time to blanch and freeze the other 12 pounds of peaches we had on hand. For future reference, I don’t recommend trying to do both at the same time.

Once the peaches were ready, I put together the cake batter and layered the batter and peaches in a springform pan. That part actually went pretty well, and I created a decorative ring of peaches on the top.

Unfortunately this is the part of the process where things got frustrating. I cooked that darn cake for an hour and a half and the center just would not set. Finally at 12:30 AM, I decided it was done no matter what and pulled it out of the oven. In the end, it turned out mostly cooked through, but it was very very moist. Overall it tasted good and looked good.

I did learn a few lessons from this experience:

Don’t start baking a cake at 9:30pm. You may very well be up until 1am waiting for the stupid thing to bake and then you have to wait for breakfast to eat it.
Peaches are very slippery and using the correct sized knife to slice them is very important. A bigger knife seems to equal a bigger risk of finger amputation
Almond extract is yucky and crazy strong!!! I only put 1/4 teaspoon in my cake (less than the recipe called for) and I can still taste it. If I make this cake again, I will leave it out entirely or replace it with vanilla extract

I think for my next dish I will try to find something a little less complicated.

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