Cookie Carnival: Blackberry Almond Bars

I joined a monthly cookie baking group called Cookie Carnival, hosted by Kate at The Clean Plate Club.


In keeping with the summer fruits theme, Kate picked Blackberry Almond Bars for this month’s cookie.

I had some blueberries and raspberries that were on the verge of heading south, so I used those rather than blackberries. And, since I didn’t need them right away, I made the blue–raspberry curd on Thursday and refrigerated until Sunday when I baked the cookies. I wasn't sure the curd would last, but it turned out fine.


The verdict? They were very tasty... a nice change from the chocolate-somthing type cookie I invariably end up baking. The fruit layer was sweet and just the right consistency, the cookie layer was like buttery shortbread.

My only complaint is that they weren’t very photogenic, lol.

BLACKBERRY ALMOND BARS
Williams-Sonoma

INGREDIENTS:
For the shortbread:
* 12 Tbs. (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup ground toasted almonds
* 1/2 cup granulated sugar
* 1/2 tsp. salt

For the blackberry curd:
* 2 pints blackberries (I used 1-1/2 pints blueberries + 1/2 pink raspberries)
* 4 eggs
* 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
* Pinch of salt
* 1 Tbs. fresh lemon juice
* 4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into 1-inch pieces

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Lightly butter a 9-by-13-by-2-inch cake pan.

To make the shortbread, in the bowl of a food processor, combine the butter, flour, almonds, granulated sugar and salt and process until small lumps form. Sprinkle the mixture into the prepared pan and press evenly into the bottom. Bake until the shortbread is golden, about 20 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack. Reduce the oven temperature to 325°F.

Meanwhile, make the blackberry curd: In a food processor or blender, puree the blackberries until smooth. Pass the puree through a chinois set over a bowl, using a pestle to press on the solids and extract as much juice as possible; discard the solids. You should have about 3/4 cup juice.

In the top pan of a double boiler or in a nonreactive saucepan, whisk together the eggs and granulated sugar until blended. Then whisk in the blackberry juice, salt and lemon juice. Set the top pan over but not touching simmering water in the bottom pan, or set the saucepan over medium-low heat. (If using a saucepan, take care not to heat the mixture too quickly.) Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spatula or spoon, until the mixture is warmed through, 1 to 2 minutes.

Begin adding the butter a little at a time, stirring each addition until blended before adding more. Continue cooking, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom of the pan, until a finger drawn across the back of the spatula leaves a path, 8 to 10 minutes more. Immediately remove the pan from the heat. Pass the curd through the chinois set over a bowl and let stand for 10 minutes. Whisk to blend, then pour the curd over the shortbread, spreading it evenly to the edges.

Bake until the curd is set, about 30 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool completely. Cut into individual bars, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Dust the bars with confectioners’ sugar before serving.

Makes 20 bars.

TWD: Chocolate Pudding

Mmmm… finally, a chocolate dessert. Pure, unadulterated chocolatey goodness.

This week’s Tuesday’s with Dorie recipe was chosen by Melissa of “It’s Melissa’s Kitchen”. My family and neighbors and I thank you, Melissa!


One of these days I'm going to learn to "completely and thoroughly" read a recipe before getting started. When I got done with the final whiz of the pudding in the mixer (food processor proved to be too small), I thought it didn't seem very chocolatey. I added a little more cocoa but still it was only faintly chocolate. Then as I was cleaning up, I happen upon my bar chocolate... which was supposed to be in the pudding, NOT on the counter. Duh! I melted it and added it... Double DUH!


The verdict? It was very good and very chocolatey. I think I would change up the type of chocolate if I made it again, though.

The recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, cocoa powder, and only 6 tablespoons sugar. I thought that would probably be too bitter for our milk-chocolate-luvin’ tastebuds, so I used a combination of semi-sweet and bittersweet. I also ended up adding about ½ cup powdered sugar because it was still just a tiny bit bitter. After it chilled for the requisite time, it tasted better.

Next time, I would probably try semi-sweet, and possibly some milk chocolate. I guess it’s hard to overcome a lifetime of eating (and enjoying) good old Hershey’s milk chocolate.


If you'd like to try it, you can find the RECIPE-----> HERE.

Better yet, go buy the book "Baking: From My Home to Yours", by Dorie Greenspan. It's worth it's weight in chocolate, I tell ya!

Stay tuned for next week's TWD adventure... Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler.

Famous Hammus Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

A couple of life-times ago, I worked in an oil refinery. A refinery in Texas… on the Gulf Coast, a stone’s throw away from Louisiana. Kinda swampy, Cajun type country. The kind of country where one might see alligator road kill on the way to work (yes, I sure did).

The kind of country where one might eat gumbo, deep-fried crabs, and bread pudding... or find themselves elbow-deep in crawfish, boiled potatoes, and corn on the cob on a Friday night. No plates required at the crawfish boil, just newspaper and paper towels.

Them’s some good eats, as Alton Brown would say.

Some of the best cooks I ran into during my five years down south were the operators at the refinery. Guys whose dads and granddads had worked there before them. Men and women who, to me, were the salt of the earth. They worked to live, not the other way around.

In the control rooms of the refinery I ate crawfish etouffee, shrimp scampi, Italian cream cake, the most decadent and piled-high carrot cake I've ever eaten… the list goes on... from guys who loved to cook and were happy to share their recipes.

One recipe I collected was from a fellow named Robert Hamm. Fitting name as he was indeed, a ham. These are similar to other oatmeal chocolate chip recipes I’ve seen, but they don’t come with the quirky title that these do. Whatever… they’re hearty and delicious and get raves whenever I make them.


Oh, and what's interesting about the first picture in this post... I was about 300 feet in the air on a tiny little platform that you get to by ladder. Wonder if my inscription is still there...

Anyway, Enjoy!


Famous Hammus Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

2-1/2 C. oatmeal
2 C. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 C. butter, room temperature
1 C. brown sugar
1 C. granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
1 12-oz. bag chocolate chips
1 4-6 oz. Hershey bar or Kisses, chopped or grated
2 C. chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Blend oatmeal to a powder in a blender or food processor. Add flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together with oatmeal powder and pulse a few times to combine.

Cream butter, eggs, vanilla, and both sugars together. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir until blended. Add chocolates and pecans and stir well.

Roll into 2-inch balls or drop by an ice cream scooper onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.

TWD: Blueberry Pie

I think Dorie Greenspan’s book “Baking: From My Home to Yours” needs to come with an all-expense paid membership to Weight Watchers.

Seriously.

Her sweets are just so damn good! I can’t tell you how many Tuesday’s with Dorie recipes I’ve faced with a ho-hum attitude, only to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with them.

Take her Double Crusted Blueberry Pie, for example. I honestly don't ever remember eating blueberry pie. Until this week, that is. I can now add “eating 4 pieces of blueberry pie in 2 days” to my list of life’s accomplishments. For crying out loud, it’s like crack blueberry pie!

The crust rocked. It was a mostly butter crust (which supposedly delivers on taste, but not on flakiness) but somehow it was flavorful AND flaky. Just look at the close-up if you don’t believe me.


I don’t have much experience making crust, but Dorie’s method must be pretty foolproof. Because even I, self-professed crust newbie, turned out pie dough with flecks and gobs of butter visible.


The filling rocked. My neighbor said she normally isn't fond of blueberry pie, but she ended up eating most of the hunk I sent over to her house.

I tried to make myself feel better about those 4 pieces of pie by reminding myself how good blueberries are supposed to be for you.


OK, I have a plea to all of you pie-makers out there... Help! I don’t think I properly dispersed the sugar/flour mixture amongst the blueberries. But I don’t exactly understand how this is accomplished. It seems if I would have tried to mix it up (once the mixture was in the crust), the sugar/flour would have just sunk to the bottom. I felt like I ended up with some gobs of uncooked sugar, which you can see at the tip of the piece above. What the heck are you supposed to do with that mass of sugar/flour?


Regardless of my minor confusion, though, this pie rocked! I will definitely be making it again.

Thanks Dorie and many thanks to Amy of South in Your Mouth for chosing yet another winner recipe.

I'll leave you with a picture of one of my poppies from earlier this spring. Until next week...

Cinnamon Rolls, Part 2

I learned two important things this week:

1. The vacuum cleaner will eventually recover after sucking up toilet water. (Don’t ask.)

2. Grandma’s cinnamon rolls really are the best.

For me, cinnamon rolls are synonymous with “grandma”. My grandma made cinnamon rolls every week, to be eaten Sunday morning before church (how’s that for a Norman Rockwell image?). I wish I'd have known then that this was not normal. I might have appreciated them just a tiny bit more.

My grandma was first a nurse, then a farmwife. She cooked three hot meals a day, tended the chickens, and the monster-sized garden, delivered eggs to customers in town, canned beets, peaches, pears and put up pickles. She raised her children and grandchildren part-time too. She sewed clothes and quilts, knitted afghans, crocheted doilies galore. She was a baking queen. She made the title “housewife” something to be proud of.

I never remember seeing her mad. Ever.

I only wish she was here to guide me in my attempts to master cinnamon rolls. She would probably be amused to see me reading and rereading recipes. I can imagine her smirking as I measure the rectangle of dough to make sure it is rolled out to the correct dimensions.

She probably could have made cinnamon rolls with her eyes closed.


I made somewhere around half a dozen batches of cinnamon rolls (it's become a blur) in my attempt to make some like hers. You might laugh at this… after these half-dozen batches I finally got the bright idea to check my recipe box on the off chance I somehow had gram’s recipe in there. Low and behold, there it was, just waiting for me to find it. Duh!


But making all of those batches brought me some much needed confidence. Maybe it was fate… I needed to practice on other recipes before I was ready for hers, so her recipe would be just like I remember.

Here are a few things I learned along the way…

- there’s no such thing as too much cinnamon. Well, for me anyway. If you're like me and love cinnamon, don't bother measuring it out, just start shaking it on until it seems like enough.


- I like to roll them a little thinner, so there is a higher percentage of filling to dough… like closer to 1/8 inch than ¼ inch thick. In the pics of the risen rolls below, the first one was rolled to a little more than 1/8-inch...


while the second was rolled to more like 1/4-inch thick (too much bread, not enough filling).


- The electric bread maker makes acceptable dough and is a good alternative for when you don’t feel like coddling the dough. Just throw your ingredients into the canister and walk away (use the sweet bread recipe included with your break maker).

-for caramel-topped cinnamon rolls, I prefer a caramel that isn’t cooked ahead of time, and one that contains butter, brown sugar, and milk or cream. Cooking ahead of time makes the caramel too hard and sticky and makes eating the rolls unwieldy and messy, IMO. The first picture had cooked topping. I had to throw them away, the caramel was so stiff and sticky...


while these had topping that was only warmed slighly beforehand (much better!)


- dental floss makes cutting the rolls a snap!



- folding the semi-rolled out dough first into a business letter shape, and then into three again gives you the best chance of ending up with something that most resembles a rectangle after being rolled out.



No doubt I’ll be a grandma someday too. I just hope my grandkids think my cinnamon rolls are as good as hers.

GRANDMA'S CINNAMON ROLLS

Dough
1 C. milk
½ C. sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 yeast cakes, or 2 packs active dry yeast, or 4 ½ tsp active dry yeast
2 eggs
4 C. sifted flour
½ C. melted butter
1 tsp. flavoring (I used vanilla)

Filling
½ C. melted butter, cooled
1 C. brown sugar, broken up to rid it of lumps (or more, to taste) or granulated sugar
Cinnamon – I actually didn’t measure. I just start shaking it on until it looks like enough. I’m guessing I used at least a tablespoon. Use what you like.

Caramel Topping (optional)
See recipe and instructions for the glaze in ----> this post.

Cream Cheese Icing (optional)
See recipe at the bottom of -----> this post.

Instructions
Scald milk. Add sugar and salt. Cool to lukewarm. Add yeast to mixture, stirring until dissolved. (I put the ingredients in the bowl of my stand mixer and used it for the mixing.) Add beaten eggs and half of the flour. Mix. Add melted butter and beat thoroughly. Stir in remaining flour.

Turn onto lightly floured board. Let stand 10 minutes covered. (I left it in the bowl for 10 minutes.)

Knead 2 or 3 minutes until dough is smooth. (I used the dough hook and let the Kitchenaid do the kneading.) Place in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover and let rise until double in bulk.


Roll out to a rectangle about 1/8 thick. Spread butter over dough, then sprinkle on cinnamon, followed by sugar. Roll into a tight log and slice into rolls around 1 inch thick.

Grease pan with pan spray. Prepare glaze topping, if using, and place in pan. Place rolls in pan.


Cover pan with saran wrap and let rolls rise until double in bulk.

Bake at 375-400 degrees F for 25 minutes or until golden brown on top.

If using cream cheese icing, spread on the still-warm cinammon rolls.

Enjoy!

Pecan Tart

Another pie/tart flavor I've wanted to try for a long time... pecan. There's nothing better than a perfect piece of pecan pie, and nothing more disappointing than one that isn't quite right.

Out of all of my cookbooks, I chose the recipe from "American Desserts: The Greatest Sweets on Earth", by Wayne Harley Brachman. Did you ever watch him waaaay back when on the show "Melting Pot"? He has such a fun personality, I wish he was still on FoodTV. He was voted one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America by Chocolatier/Pastry Arts & Design Magazines, 1998. Pretty good for a guy who is self taught and has never taken any cooking classes.

He inspires me and gives me hope.

Anyway, about the tart... how was it?

Excellent! I don't think I need to bother trying any other recipes.

Because I was playing around with mini-tarts, I scaled the recipe back and only made one. And to up the experimentation factor, I baked it in my toaster oven, if you can believe that. I worked just fine, I'm happy to report.

I'll post the recipe here, but I urge you to pick up this book, it has some fantastic recipes.

Pecan Pie

3/4 C. sugar
4 large eggs
1 C. dark corn syrup (I used Lyle's golden syrup)
2 T. dark rum
1 T. vanilla extract
4 T. unsalted butter, melted

2 C. pecan halves

Nine-inch pie or tart shell of your chosing, blind baked

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, with rack in the middle.

In a large bowl, lightly beat together the sugar, eggs, corn syrup, rum and vanilla, just until mixed. Stir in butter.

Place pie or tart shell (still in ring) on a rimmed cookie sheet to catch drips. Spread pecans on bottom of shell.

Cover with the egg mixture, ensuring all pecans are covered.


Bake for 30 minutes or until tiny bubbles appear around the edges and the center looks barely set. Cool cookie sheet and pie or tart on a cooling rack.

Get a fork and dig in!

TWD: Apple Cheddar Scones

This week's Tuesday's with Dorie recipe was Apple Cheddar Scones, chosen by Karina of The Floured Apron. Thanks, Karina, these scones were fantastic... so light and fluffy. The cheddar wasn't obvious and added a nice rich buttery flavor.

I'm going to let the pictures tell the story tonight (hey, it's 11:35 PM on Monday! I needed an 8-day week this week, lol).

The ingredients, minus the buttermilk and apple juice...

Mix together the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in another...



Add the chilled butter...



Coat the butter with the flour mixture and then cut in. I used a pastry blender...



Adding the wet ingredients...



Stir, gently...



In go the dried apples and cheddar. I doubled the amount of apple as I was hoping for more of a sweet flavor than savory...



All mixed in, then kneaded. I opted for the spatula "kneading" as I wasn't up to nasty hands today...



I spooned the sticky mass onto a well floured cutting board...



... and kind of squished them into place with my spatula (again, no nasty hands)...



Cut them into 8 pieces THEN read the directions where it said to cut them into 12. (No A+ for me this week, lol)...



OK, tell me if this has happened to you. You're just about to take your perfectly-browned-on-top baked good out of the oven when the doorbell rings. You go to the door and immediately forget what you were doing and proceed to chat away with your visitor for too long.

Yeah, me neither, that's never happened to me (cough, sputter)...


One observation... it appears that the way they look going into the oven is pretty much the way they look coming out. I notice Dorie's are nice and smooth and mine are more... well, rustic. If I do these again, I'll try to smooth them out a bit, maybe pretty them up a tad.

I have no "magazine shot" with the matching china, linens, cup of hot steaming coffee, etc. this week. (See "need for 8-day week" mentioned above.) I'll bet many of the other TWD-ers have, though, so please be sure to stop by Tuesday's with Dorie and check them out.

By the way, next week's recipe is... (drum roll please)... blueberry pie.

See you then and thanks for stopping by!