vegan brownies

This is a bit weird as a "recipe" because it's just a modification of a mix, but whatever. It's been really good both times I made it.

 -box of brownie mix (just regular cheap stuff from Aldi--mine called for two eggs)

-most of a single-serving tub of unsweetened applesauce 

-3 TBS natural/unsweetened almond butter

-additional 1/4 cup or up to 1/3 cup cocoa powder 

-1/2 tsp baking powder

 

Make according to directions but substitute the applesauce and the almond butter for the eggs.  

 

Spread into 8x8 pan and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes

 

You can also swirl 1/4 (or more; doing this again I'd use 1/2) cup of tahini onto it after putting it in the pan.  

panna cotta

 https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/panna-cotta-14224

(not necessarily this recipe, just panna cotta in general)

Chocolate chip cookies

 Saving to make later:

https://ask.metafilter.com/327204/What-is-the-best-cookie-recipe#4712211

proportions:

3 2/3c {17 oz} flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt

2 1/2 sticks or 1 1/4 cups {10 ounces} unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups {10 ounces} light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds (20 ounces) bittersweet chocolate chips, disks or fèves

with notes that:

• use a scale
• rest dough for 24 hours
• melted/very soft butter thoroughly mixed with sugar
• fresh/decent quality brown sugar
• salting the top of the cookies

peach cornmeal upside down cake

I neeeeeed to make this when it's peach season:
https://www.marthastewart.com/316964/peach-and-cornmeal-upside-down-cake

Chocolate Chia Pudding

1 can of reduced fat coconut milk (Trader Joe's brand, about 2 cups even though the can says it's about 6 1/4-cup servings)
1/2 cup chia seeds
~3 TBS granulated sugar
splash vanilla extract
dash of salt
1/4 cup cocoa powder (plus a little more?)

I used an immersion blender to blend everything well before adding the chia seeds, and I'm letting it sit at room temperature for a bit to set before refrigerating because coconut milk solidifies in the fridge and I imagine that chia seeds can't absorb solid coconut milk.

Verdict: tasty, but didn't taste like what I wanted, which was...honestly probably chocolate soy milk. Which is an unfair expectation of coconut chia pudding. 

Bookmarking because I want to make it:

Peach Frangipane tart

yet another brownie recipe: Tartine bakery style brownies

I saw this recipe and I had to try it. I used Trader Joe's 72% dark pound chocolate pound plus bar.  (Some reading suggested that there is not a formal difference between "dark" and "bittersweet."

I had to beat the egg/sugar mixture for quite a while, and it never really reached the color/texture combo described. Perhaps the eggs were too old, but colorwise I'm no sure how brown sugar would ever let this be pale yellow.

Anyway. The results were good, but kind of too fudgelike for me. Very dense, but almost too dense, if that makes sense. I would prefer a little moist and cakey, perhaps, rather than simply solid.  But perhaps they are so solid because the eggs didn't go as planned. Hard to know.  I think, overall, I prefer cocoa-based brownies. They are less work, too.

pumpkin bread

From  http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2010/09/pumpkin-bread/ with modifications:

1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup water
1.5 cups brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1  teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon allspice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9x5 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, mix together pumpkin puree, eggs, oil, butter, water, sugars and vanilla until well blended. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, pumpkin spice and walnuts. Stir the dry ingredients into the pumpkin mixture until just blended. Pour into the prepared pans.
Bake in preheated oven 45-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Keep pumpkin bread tightly wrapped in plastic wrap to retain freshness.

This time I substituted about 1 1/4 cups of oat flour (whole grain) for 1 1/2 cups of flour because I wanted to use up the oat flour.

Baking in 1 glass 9x5  and 1 glass 8x8 pan, greased with flour+butter spray.

Verdict: tasty, and it comes right out of the pan. Win. 

Cherry brown butter bars

I made these:
http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/06/cherry-brown-butter-bars-new-video-project/

OMG.

I think I cooked them for 35 minutes (after assembling), which was fine. I used 36 cherries, which seemed like a good amount. Not sure how many pounds it was, but I pitted 2.5-3 cups total and didn't use anywhere near all of them.

Done again, I might bake the base for slightly less time (15 minutes?) but it was fine as-is.

I don't think I modified the recipe at all.

Peach frozen yogurt-y stuff

I made this by accident while trying to make a peach milkshake with frozen peaches.

Blend in cuisinart til almost pulverized:1 cup (ish) of frozen peaches
Add a few scoops of low fat yogurt and sugar to taste. AND a splash of almond extract. That's what makes it really nice. I'm not usually a big fan of frozen yogurt or fruit ice creams, but this was pretty good. Maybe not the best choice for December, though.

Solo Almond Bundt Cake

From http://www.solofoods.com/recipes/almond-bundt-cake
This cake requires a can of Solo brand "Almond Cake and Pastry Filling" and the recipe is generally printed on the back side of the can's label.This stuff has ground almonds in it but it's NOT equivalent to marzipan. It's kind of hard to find; in the San Francisco Bay area I've only seen it at Andronico's, even though I've seen Solo products advertised in Lucky's circulars occasionally. At some point I'd like to figure out how to replicate it without the canned stuff, both 'cause it's pricey ($5/can) and because it has corn syrup in it (which I'm not terribly against in moderation, but if I'm baking, why not use real sugar?)  In the meantime I make it anyway, because it's more almondy than the other almond bundt recipe I tried.

ANYWAY. I don't really modify this recipe at all:

1 cup butter (or margarine), softened

2 1⁄4 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoon baking powder

3 eggs

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

1 can Solo Almond Cake and Pastry Filling (protip: open one end of the can, the flip it over the bowl and start opening the other end. That will break the suction/vacuum and it'll all fall out of the can neatly in one chunk.)

1⁄4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease and flour 10-inch tube pan or 12-cup Bundt pan and set aside. Beat butter and granulated sugar in large bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in almond filling until blended. Stir flour, baking powder, and salt until mixed. Add to almond mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with dry ingredients.  Beat until blended. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan.Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until cake tester inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on rack.

Chocolate Bundt Cake

Modified from here

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces butter (2 sticks)
• 1/2 3/4?-1 cup Dutch process cocoa (I used regular, TJ's)
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 cups granulated sugar (I used slightly less, maybe 2-3 tbs less?)
• 1 cup sour cream I used the top of TJ's French Cream Line yogurt
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, stir before measuring
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (+ 1/2 tsp, + 1/8 to every 3 TBS of extra non-Dutched cocoa)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Preparation:

Grease and flour a 10- to 12-cup Bundt pan with Baker's Joy or another flour+grease spray. (Seriously, that stuff is magic for bundt cakes.) Heat oven to 350°. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat; add cocoa, stirring until smooth. Whisk in the water and remove from heat. To the warm cocoa mixture, add the sugar, sour cream, 1 tablespoon vanilla, and eggs; whisk until smooth. In another bowl combine the flour, soda, and salt. Add all at once to the first mixture, whisking until well blended.
Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until it feels firm to the touch and has slightly pulled away from the sides of the pan. Cool in pan on a rack for 20 minutes. Carefully loosen the cake with a knife and invert onto a large plate.

NOTES: the extra cocoa was good. The yogurt seems fine, it seems moist enough. I wasn't sure it was mixed all the way at the end--it felt like there were what were either bubbles or tiny lumps of flour, but it was fine. I think I actually cooked it for close to 45 minutes and it was fine, not dry.)


*If you're using a standard baking cocoa (not Dutch-process or high-quality) add 1/2 teaspoon more of baking soda to the dry ingredients.

Almond Bars

(from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/almond-bars/)
This is the weirdest recipe I've made in a while. I thought it would be more like a brownie minus the chocolate flavor/color, but they're cakey and sort of spongy. (My guess is this is due to beating the eggs and sugar, and also due to the two cups of flour; brownie recipes would have less flour for this size pan.) They seem better after a few hours/the next day when they're a little more dense.

Preheat oven to 325. Grease a 9x13 pan (I used flour+grease Pam spray.)

• 4 eggs
• 2 cups sugar (I used less, between 1.5 and 1.75 cups, which is plenty)
  
• 1 cup butter, melted (I used salted butter)
  
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons almond extract (I used a little more, almost a tablespoon)

Beat the sugar and eggs with mixer. Add in butter, flour, almond extract. Mix well. Spread into pan and bake for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center of pan comes out clean. (I was worried they'd be underbaked at that point, but they were fine. They seemed weird until they cooled and sat for a while.)

sugar cookies

I've never made a great sugar cookie, but it's been years since I tried. New project: find a recipe and method that works.

Tonight I made the dough for Alton Brown's recipe:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon milk

and I added 2 tsp vanilla.
I creamed the butter by itself first, then added the sugar. I never really get my sugar totally dissolved in my butter so it's not gritty, and this time was no exception. My arm just gets too tired. Someday with a better-sized bowl, or a stand mixer, I'll try that. (Or maybe a food processor. Hmm.) By the time I was done adding all of the flour, the dough was in small clumps and didn't/wouldn't really cohere. I'm not sure if that was because my mixer bowl is gigantic, but I think it's happened before. At any rate - you're supposed to chill the dough for two hours, so I divided it in half, scooped up half and molded it into a lump with my hands (and I think the heat and pressure from my hands helped it cohere quite a bit) and wrapped it in plastic wrap, and then added a little more milk to the second half, mixed it more, and wrapped it up. We'll see which (if any) comes out better. Next time, (if I'm not happy with these results) I'll try a recipe that uses two eggs.

Verdict: I am giving up on making sugar cookies because I cannot roll them out without them sticking to the surface or breaking for love or money.

Chocolate chip cookies (without a mixer!)

Recipe modified from http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/i-want-to-marry-you-cookies-recipe/index.html

1 cup butter
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 cup uncooked rolled oats
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1.5-2 cups chocolate chips

Melt the butter over the stove in a large pot. Turn off the heat. Stir in the sugars until well mixed, then place in fridge for 10 minutes to cool. Meanwhile - combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
Remove mixture from fridge. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Stir in flour mixture and oats, then chocolate chips.

Form into 1" (or slightly less) balls on parchment paper on cookie sheet. Chill in fridge for 30 minutes or more. Preheat oven to 325, bake for 12-14 (or more)
minutes. Remove parchment paper from cookie sheet and let cookies cool.

These are nice and chewy, not too thin...but I think I might omit the cinnamon next time. It's distracting. I can also see using a little bit less sugar and slightly fewer chocolate chips.
--
Next attempt, 1/24: 1 cup packed dark brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, no cinnamon, 1 1/4 cups of chocolate chips. The amount of chocolate chips was good, but there was something off about the taste and texture. More sugar next time, I suppose.

chocolate chip cookies w/ oat flour

1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3? cup white sugar

^cream

1 1/4 cups white flour
1 cup oat flour
3/4 tsp (?) baking soda
too much salt (next time: 1/2 tsp? or get a goddamn measuring spoon.)
^mix really well

add 2 eggs and 2ish tsp of vanilla to butter mixture. beat til creamy. stir in flour mixture. add about 3/4 of a package of chocolate chips. Chill, perhaps. Bake at 350 degrees for some amount of time more than 10 minutes, on parchment paper. Perhaps add slightly more flour next time. Or chill longer. Or just stop spazzing out about the quality of homemade baked goods because any cookie is a good cookie.

peach cobbler

Used these two (very similar) recipes
http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-peach-cobbler-10000000257827/
http://southernfood.about.com/od/peachcobblers/r/r70913a.htm

which both do the odd thing where you melt butter in a pan in the oven and then pour a batter directly over it and then dump fruit over it and supposedly the batter/topping magically rises to the top. We'll see. I'm doubtful but I figure nothing with this mix of ingredients could taste bad, so who cares?

Modifications/notes:

Used extra lemon juice (2TBS?) because I like that slight citric acid counterbalance in my fruit
Used (I think) 5 very large peaches, sliced in cubes, which filled up (brimming) a 2-qt pyrex casserole
1/4-1/2 cup of sugar in the peaches - a cup seems like too much
2ish tsp of baking soda (oh shit I just realized it says baking powder...hmm. gah. it's been a long time since I made that mistake.)
used the 1 tsp vanilla
didn't boil anything
didn't peel anything
1/2 cup of sugar in the crust/dough

notes on how it turned out to come.

ETA: brought this to a party and everyone seemed to like it--it had a good amount of sugar. It was more liquidy than would be ideal, probably because I used extra peaches. Next time I won't pour in the extra liquid left sitting at the bottom of the bowl after I made the fruit mixture, and perhaps add some tapioca or cornstarch. The unpeeled peaches were fine. I baked it for 45 minutes (or more) but part of that was because I could see it was so liquidy. Some of the batter did rise to the top, but not all of it. Again, probably because I used extra peaches (or maybe because of the baking soda mixup--which didn't seem noticeable as far as flavor, fortunately.)

Also, for the love of Bob, if you can find freestone peaches or nectarines, do it. It's hard to cut fruit off a pit and into nice slices. 

Almond Bundt Cake

Quick and dirty notes:
Used this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Glazed-Almond-Bundt-Cake/Detail.aspx

Put in closer to 3 tsp of almond extract and 1.5 tsp of vanilla extract.
As per usual, used salted butter and omitted the added salt.
The batter didn't seem to have as much volume as I remembered bundt cakes having, but it's been a while and it expanded enough to fill the pan to a decent extent.
Baked for 60 minutes (on a low rack of the oven.) My oven miraculously stayed very close to 350 the entire time! It could have taken a tad less time but definitely not more, and it wasn't burned.

It was good but I feel like it could use more almond flavor somehow, maybe with a little less sweetness.

almond brownies

Adapted from http://www.carascravings.com/2010/03/pps-best-brownies-ever.html

1 cup butter (salted)
8 oz unsweetened chocolate
~2 cups sugar
2 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
scant 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1.5 cups almond meal

Melt butter and chocolate on stove. Stir in extracts and sugar. Let cool slightly. Add egg and baking powder. Stir well. Stir in almond meal. Spread into greased square (8x8?) pan and bake at 325.

We'll see what happens...

(white) whole wheat brownies

I'm going to try these: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/tasting-is-believing-whole-grain-brownies-recipe

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter
2 cups light brown sugar
several (6?) Trader Joes unsweetened chocolate baking disks, broken into pieces
3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon espresso powder, optional but recommended
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups White Whole Wheat Flour

It promises the shiny top crust, which I'm a big fan of.

Notes:
-omitted salt because I used salted butter
-used 1.5 c light brown sugar + 0.5c white sugar
-threw some trade joes unsweetened baking chocolate disks in with the melting butter because I wanted to use 'em up and because I wasn't sure how potent/fresh my cocoa powder was.
-sprayed the hell out of the pan with baking spray because I'm tired of having to chisel brownies out
-oven stayed at a pretty consistent 350 this time, miracle of miracles
-they rose a good bit, seem to have baked pretty evenly, and the toothpick came out clean after just 25 minutes, so I pulled them out of the oven.
-they're kind of cakey, and came out of the pan very easily - but maybe because of all the baking spray



Next on the roster is almond-meal-based brownies. My housemate brought one home from Whole Foods and it was pretty tasty. If I had a food processor I'd do this: http://www.hanneblank.com/blog/2011/04/22/elemental-chocolate-almond-cake/