Adventures in Baking

Birthday Biscuits and Gravy

The first two months of 2012 had some great baking successes. In particular, I was doing some special birthday baking as I seem to end up with a ton of Capricorn friends! For my friend S, I wanted something easy, tasty, and transportable for his surprise birthday party. Without even realizing it, I hit the nail on the head with the perfect dessert for him and transporting to a party: Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes. You make a basic cheesecake filling and mix in some chopped Oreo. A whole Oreo serves as the bottom crust and you bake them in muffin tins. S told me that Oreos were his guilty pleasure, so I was super excited that I had made this choice without even knowing this little fact about him. These are perfect for a party because you do not have to cut or serve anything. Each person just gets an individual one.

Image courtesy of gracessweetlife.com

My lovely husband had his birthday up next. For him, I had a much more elaborate vision. However, first my goal was to make him his favorite breakfast: biscuits and gravy. This was actually a bit of a challenge for me because he is the biscuit and pastry maker in our house. For some reason, I tend to avoid anything that requires the creation of flakiness. So, as a result, I decided to go in a different direction. Instead, I chose to pursue the baking powder method for biscuit making. They turned out quite well, if I do say so myself. I used this Cream Biscuit recipe.

The only frustrating/confusing point for me was when it discussed leaving the flour behind and using the remaining cream to moisten it and add to the dough on the counter. I looked at the recipe in our New Best Recipe cookbook and it is slightly more detailed in its instructions. It advises add cream a little at a time to the dry bits and stirring until moistened, and then adding it to the rest. I just poured the cream in, sort of stirred it around and then dumped it on top of the dough. It worked but was messy because it was not combined well.

The sausage gravy was the standard cream gravy base, and here is the recipe I used.

For a while now, I have been wanting to merge several recipes and make my own version of a S’More Cupcake. R’s birthday seemed like the perfect opportunity. Since this is a hodgepodge of several recipes, I will provide the instructions here with credit for parts, but here is the run down on what you are getting yourself into. First up is a graham cupcake. I found several versions, but I like the one that had you use graham flour instead of graham cracker crumbs. Just seemed more authentic. A lot of recipes have you do a chocolate filling or a layer of chocolate ganache then a fancy toasted marshmallow frosting. Fancy frostings scare me (perhaps one day I will attempt this Swiss Meringue thing all the bloggers swear is the best frosting ever). And I do not have a torch to toast frosting. And that seemed like it would be a pain in the @$$ to transport. So, I decided I wanted to do a toasted marshmallow filling. There are lots of marshmallow filling ideas out there to imitate Hostess cupcakes. I finally found one that incorporated actual toasted marshmallows along with the marshmallow crème. Finally, I decided I wanted to keep it simple and just dip the tops in a chocolate ganache. That is where I stumbled. I opted to do the cut the top off, put filling in, and put top back on method. Well, that made for some really homely cupcakes that I knew would look even worse with just a layer of ganache. So, I ended up making a chocolate cream cheese frosting as a last minute change. I am not sure that they were my best effort, but everyone scarfed them down and raved about them. They were also super rich! Next time, I think I might just try the pastry tip injector method for the filling.

The cupcake recipe comes from the Brown Eyed Baker. Her version does look tasty.

Yield: 24 cupcakes

Prep Time: 1 hour | Bake Time: 25 minutes

For the Cupcakes:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1-1/3 cups graham flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons salt
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
10 ounces (1¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups light brown sugar
¼ cup honey
6 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together both flours, baking powder, salt and cinnamon.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream the butter, brown sugar and honey until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to medium; beat in the eggs and vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined.

Divide the batter evenly among the lined cups. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden brown and a thin knife inserted in the centers comes out with only a few moist crumbs attached, about 25 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 10 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely. Cupcakes can be stored up to 1 day at room temperature, or frozen up to 1 month.

Next up is the Toasted Marshmallow Filling, which I borrowed from Sweetapolita.

8 large marshmallows

½ cup powdered sugar

¼ lb of butter (1 stick, or ½ cup) at room temperature

½ teaspoon of vanilla

4 oz of marshmallow cream or fluff

Place marshmallows on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Place on lower rack of oven, and broil marshmallows until nice and brown. Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t burn. Once they start browning, it happens very quickly. Combine butter and powdered sugar in electric mixer fit with paddle attachment on low until blended (about 1 minute). Add vanilla and mix on high for about 3 minutes. Add marshmallow cream, toasted marshmallows and mix on lowest setting for a minute.

Now you put the filling in the cupcakes. Either cut out a cone shaped piece and put some in the middle or use a pastry bag to fill. There is lots of techniques out there on the internet if you are not sure what I am talking about.

Last Minute Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting. I picked this recipe solely because it made about half the amount of most recipes, and I didn’t want leftover frosting. It turned out nice. I would use it again.

¼ cup butter, room temperature

4 oz cream cheese, room temperature

¼ cup cocoa powder

3 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 ½ cup to 2 ½ cup powdered sugar

Beat together the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Sift in cocoa and beat until smooth. Add milk and vanilla along with about 1 ½ cups of powdered sugar (I am pretty sure I sifted mine in with the cocoa). Mix at medium speed until smooth. Add sugar as needed to get the consistency you want. And, I am pretty sure you know what to do with the frosting after that!

Next up was our friend, J. She was experimenting with a vegan diet, so I told her I had just the birthday cupcake for her! This has been in rotation a couple of times at potlucks and is quickly devoured. I am actually surprised I have not put this one up yet! It is Vegan Banana French Toast Cupcakes. We acquired originally from the Bake and Destroy website, but I cannot find it on there anymore. Weird. The only change we make is to use vanilla flavored almond milk and to leave out the almond extract. I like to make these in our mini muffin pan, especially when taking to a party. These come together ridiculously easily and quickly, and I cannot speak to the frosting, but it sounds yummy!

I will leave you with a breakfast gem that I made for a recent brunch study group: Honey and Goat Cheese Filled Fig Muffins. First off, I could eat the goat cheese mixture with a spoon. Okay, maybe I did… I think it would be quite tasty on crackers and bread. The muffin themselves were super yummy and sort of healthy. The filling is a mix of honey, goat cheese and lemon zest. The muffins are pretty basic but have the addition of dried figs for an additional layer of richness. In fact, that was the only thing that was a bit time consuming: chopping the figs into bite-sized pieces. Make these soon.

Sweet Semester Endings and High Altitude Baking

For the end of the semester, I agreed to make some fun desserts for my staff’s last meeting as a thank you for their hard work. I asked for suggestions and got a request for brownies and for dessert pizza. One of my staff, who was transferring to another school, is vegan, so I also decided to experiment and try to make several vegan desserts. As usual, I forgot to take pictures. One of these days I will actually get in the habit of remembering to do so.

With regards to high altitude baking, we really didn’t have any problems with this other than that the sugar cookie crust spread a little more than I anticipated. I actually picked the brownie recipe because someone who commented on it was a high altitude baker and said it worked well. We did treat ourselves to this great cookbook, Pie in the Sky, since we both like baking and wanted some extra guidance. This one is nice because it has tables for different altitudes and has some nice stories about her journey to create all these recipes. We have used it for reference several times already with pretty good success.

Ultimate Vegan Brownies

These brownies were pretty tasty. They were very rich and fudgy, and yes, I really couldn’t tell they were vegan. I had never cooked with coconut oil before, but we had been wanting to try it as we had heard it was a good alternative for butter for some baking. I will warn it is pretty pricey, but we found it on sale so we decided to splurge and try it. I found it made the brownies a little oily or greasy, so I might try a little less. I also discovered that my instant espresso powder was REALLY old and concluded it might be best to not use it.We ended up just grinding up some coffee super fine and letting it sit in hot water. I found the coffee taste to be a bit bitter and strong. In the future I would probably brew the coffee or make sure I had fresh instant espresso. Other than that, we followed the recipe as given. The flax as a substitute for egg worked well, as creepily had the consistency of eggs after it sat as instructed. So they were good, but I would like to give them another go and see what I think with a little less oil and brewed coffee. The recipe follows, but if you click on the title above it will link you to the original recipe.

1 cup coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) bittersweet chocolate or to be even more strict just use unsweetened chocolate with 70% (or more) cocoa solids.
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
1 cup cake or pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.

• In a double boiler or a bowl set atop a pot of gently simmering water, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together.
• Mix the coffee (or espresso) powder with the 1/2 cup of hot water and stir into the coconut/chocolate mixture. Add sugar and remove from heat. The sugars will dissolve a bit but you don’t need to completely dissolve it.
• In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
• In yet another bowl (small one), mix the flax seeds and 6 Tbsp of hot water, allow to sit for 2-3 minutes.
• Combine the chocolate/coconut oil mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. Add the thickened flax and stir that in as well.
• Pour the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Start checking the brownies after the first 30 minutes to ensure it is baking evenly.
• When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, set atop a cooling rack and get busy somewhere else. These babies need to be utterly cooled before consuming. If you attempt to eat them before they are properly cooled, they will crumble. When they are properly cooled, you can’t even tell they are eggless, I promise!

Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes

These you MUST try. Robert tried these on a whim for us to take to a friend’s house for dinner one night, and they disappeared in minutes. Since then, they have made multiple appearances. They go together ridiculously easy and are addictive. The first time, we made them with cow milk, but then decided to experiment making them vegan. We both dislike soy milk, so we decided to try almond milk. We leave out the almond extract because we do not like it, however that is why we decided to try using almond milk. I don’t like nuts in baked goods, so we also left those out. We found the almond milk worked well. They seemed a little stickier than the first time with cow milk, but we really didn’t notice the difference, otherwise. We like to use our mini-muffin pan along with couple of muffin tops. Again, click on the recipe title to follow a link to the original recipe. What follows is our adaptations.

1/2 cup mashed over ripe banana

1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Then you:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with paper liners (or spray with baking spray).
• Throw your mashed banana in a blender or or just smash it with a fork.
• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl, mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, soy or rice milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine.
• Fill liners 2/3 full (we didn't use liners, and just sprayed the muffin tins with cooking spray). Bake 20-22 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Really Yummy Oat Bars

The inspiration for these is this amazing strawberry cookie bar that I had at Macy’s Coffeehouse. My friend came across this recipe in a macrobiotic cookbook she has, so she passed it on to me since the ingredients sounded very similar to what we had assessed as we ate one of the bars. It is not quite the same, but they are still really yummy as the recipe title promises! With the pan that I used, I decided to put all the oat mixture down and make a second half batch of the oat mixture to put on top of the preserves. I didn’t measure it, but I know I also used more strawberry preserves than it called for. I just spread it out until it made a full layer across the full pan.

• ½ c. whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ c. rolled oats
• 1 t. cinnamon
• ½ t. nutmeg
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. sea salt
• 1/3 c. maple syrup
• 1/3 c. oil
• ½ t. vanilla
• 1/3 c. fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add maple syrup, corn oil, and vanilla mixing thoroughly. In a small baking pan or Pyrex dish, press half the mixture like a thick pie crust. Spread the fruit jam onto it and cover with the rest of the oat mixture. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool before cutting into squares.

Dessert Pizza

For as common a dessert recipe as this one is, I had actually never made one. After researching lots of recipes I went with this one. I let the cookie bake for about 25 minutes. I found I really had to whip the cream cheese and whipped topping for a long time, and it still had a somewhat lumpy texture. Next time, I think I would whip the cream cheese with the milk first before adding whipped topping in hopes of getting an overall smoother texture. For fruit, I used a can of mandarin oranges, kiwis, red raspberries, and blueberries. I think this was my staff’s favorite. There were no leftovers!