Hi folks! Well I couldn’t resist. I had to think up a second recipe for Sophistimom’s and Challenge Dairy’s shortbread cookie contest. I was inspired to do a sort of east-meets-west cookie this time around. After some quick brainstorming, the ideas that I kept circling around back to were of Chinese sesame seed cookies and those pink box almond cookies. Baked sesame seeds have such a unique, nutty, and oily flavor to them that I felt would work great in a shortbread.

At the last minute, I decided to also throw in a little bit of unsweetened flake coconut for texture. I had to tinker with the ratios a little bit, but I think I landed on a great combination. These cookies are buttery, but the sesame seeds keep them from being overly rich. The combination of sesame seeds and almond meal create an amazingly nutty flavor, but without the nuts. (I’m not a fan of whole nuts in baked goods, unless they’re pecans, hehe.) Maybe this would be a great tea cookie for jasmine or oolong tea.

I used white sesame seeds for this recipe because that’s what I had on hand, but using whole black sesame seeds would probably yield some stunning looking shortbread I bet!

Sesame Almond Coconut Shortbread Cookies (half recipe, makes 8 wedges) | Adapted from Sophistimom
(Original recipe in black, my additions in red)

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter + 1 tablespoon, at room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons sesame powder (grind sesame seeds in a coffee or spice grinder)
• 2 tablespoons whole sesame seeds, white or black
• 2 tablespoons almond meal (or grind up whole almonds, with or without skin)
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened coconut flake

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300F.
2. Mix together flour, sesame powder and seeds, almond, and coconut.
3. Cream together butter, sugar, and salt until pale yellow and fluffy.
4. Slowly add in flour mixture and mix until just combined.
5. Press one teaspoon into a 9-inch round cake or springform pan.
6. Bake approximately 30 minutes, or until edges just begin to brown.
7. Remove from oven, let sit for 5 minutes, then score the shortbread and loosen its edges from the sides of the pan.
8. Let sit for 10 minutes, then remove from pan to cooling rack to cool completely.

Oh me, oh my. For anybody who’s ever been to a high tea service, you know that it’s all about the scones, tea sandwiches, and of course, the shortbread cookies. Oh and the tea. Obviously. Earl Grey is one of my favorite types of teas, and lucky for me, it’s also a popular choice for tea service.

So what better way to get my shortbread and tea fix than to combine both into a single bite-sized disk of deliciosity? (Yay for making up words.) I have to thank Sophistimom for pushing me to find the inspiration for this particular recipe. You see, she and Challenge Dairy are running a contest to win… get this… FREE BUTTER for a year. Those must be the two most beautiful words in existence. Put them next to each other and you get some cosmic pastry synergy going on. “Free” has to come first though, or else that creates a much sadder state of things. But I digress. On to the cookies!

One of the characteristics of Earl Grey tea is the hint of bergamot orange flavor. I knew it would be hard to capture that flavor in the pastry cream, so I took the base recipe that Sophistimom provided for the contest and added the zest of one orange to it. The pastry cream recipe came from Cook’s Illustrated, but I took the liberty of brewing the Earl Grey in the half-and-half before proceeding with the rest of the steps.

This is one delicious cookie, I have to say. The changes I made to the original recipes are small, but the impact is big. I’d venture to say that this was one of my more successful experiments. Give a try, let me know how it turns out for you!

Orange Shortbread Cookies (half recipe) | Adapted from Sophistimom

Ingredients

• 1 stick butter, at room temperature
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cups all purpose flour

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300F.
2. Cream together butter, sugar, and salt until pale yellow and fluffy.
3. Slowly add in flour and mix until just combined.
4. Press one teaspoon into the bottoms of mini muffin tins.
5. Bake approximately 20 minutes, or until edges just begin to brown.

Earl Grey Pastry Cream | Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

Ingredients

• 1      cup half-and-half
• 2 tablespoons of high quality Earl Grey loose leaf tea
• 1/4     cup granulated sugar
• pinch table salt
• 2     large egg yolks
• 1 1/2     tablespoons cornstarch
• 2     tablespoons unsalted butter (cold), cut into 4 pieces
• 1     teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Heat half-and-half, 3 tablespoons sugar, tea, and salt in medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat until simmering, stirring occasionally to dissolve sugar.
2. Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks in medium bowl until thoroughly combined. Whisk in remaining tablespoons sugar and whisk until sugar has begun to dissolve and mixture is creamy, about 15 seconds. Whisk in cornstarch until combined and mixture is pale yellow and thick, about 30 seconds.
3. When half-and-half mixture reaches full simmer, gradually whisk hot half-and-half into yolk mixture to temper. Return mixture to saucepan, scraping bowl with rubber spatula; return to simmer over medium heat, whisking constantly, until 3 or 4 bubbles burst on surface and mixture is thickened and glossy, about 30 seconds.
4. Off heat, whisk in butter and vanilla.
5. Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain the mixture to medium bowl to remove tea leaves and any cooked egg bits. Press plastic wrap directly on surface, and refrigerate until cold and set, at least 3 hours or up to 48 hours.

Challah (or sometimes, hallah), is a traditional Jewish egg bread. And it is delicious.  It makes a very tender sandwich bread that marries well with cold cuts, but I fell in love with it in the form of French toast.  I’m drooling just thinking about it.

For this recipe, I turned to my handy copy of the Joy of Cooking. Challah takes a bit of patience to make since you have to give it two full risings, but the effort is worth it! If the loaf isn’t gone within the first day or two, use any leftovers in your favorite French toast recipe. Trust me on this one. Would I ever lead you astray? Don’t believe me? Pinch My Salt agrees with me. If you listen to no one else, listen to her.

I tried to get fancy with a 6-strand braid.

The Joy recipe tells you to make a 3-strand challah, but I wanted to be all fancy schmany pants and do a 5-strand braid (tutorials on this can be found on YouTube). The caveat is that when you braid a 6-strand loaf, the strands tend to separate during baking. My recommendation is to stick to the 3-strand method, or go by the Cook’s Illustrated technique which involves one smaller 3-strand loaf stacked on top of a larger 3-strand loaf prior to the final rise.

Top your loaf with poppy seeds or sesame seeds for some flourish!

Challah | Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 1/2 c. warm water
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 3 c. bread flour
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 2 large yolks, lightly beaten
• 3 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 egg for egg wash
• Poppy or sesame seeds (optional)

Directions

1. Combine yeast and water in the bowl of a heavy-duty mixer. Let stand until yeast is dissolved, about 5 minutes.
2. Add 1/2 cup of the flour, the eggs, yolks, oil, sugar, and salt to the yeast mixture. Stir until blended.
3. Gradually stir in the remaining flour.
4. Knead the dough for about 8 minutes by hand or with the dough hook on low to medium speed until the dough is smooth and elastic and no longer sticks to your hands or the bowl.
5. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and turn it once to coat with oil.
6. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
7. Punch down the dough, knead briefly, and return to the bowl. Let rise until nearly doubled.
8. Divide the dough into 3 pieces. On an unfloured surface, roll into balls. Let rest, loosely covered, for 10 minutes.
9. Grease and sprinkle a baking sheet with cornmeal (to prevent the bread from sticking).
10. Roll each dough ball into a 14-inch long rope. Braid the dough. Pinch the ends together and tuck both ends of the braid underneath the loaf to hide the seams.
11. Loosely cover with lightly oiled plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled, about 45 minutes.
12. Preheat the oven to 375F.
13. Whisk together water and remaining egg for the egg wash. Brush the top of the dough with the egg wash, then sprinkle with seeds.
14. Baking until the crust is golden brown and the bottom of the loaf sounds hollow when tapped, about 30 to 35 minutes.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I wanted to post another pie recipe for you. In my household, I was always at odds with my older brother during the holidays. I’ve been putting together Thanksgiving dinner for my family since I was 16, but I am a lover of pumpkin pie and my brother is not so much so. Oh, and my mom is partial to lemon meringue. That said, many a year we would end up with multiple pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Not that I’m complaining. There’s no such thing as too much pie!

So here’s my recipe for apple pie, just in time for those of you that aren’t too keen on pumpkin (although I strongly urge you to try my recipe for Honey Pumpkin Pie before you write off completely).

There’s plenty of discussion around what kind of apples to use in an apple pie, but I use a mixture of what’s readily available at the local supermarket. I pick up some Granny Smiths for tartness and texture, Fuji apples for sweetness, and Galas for juiciness. Paired with an all-butter crust, the product that you get has great mouth feel – the Granny Smiths hold their shape nicely while the Fujis balance out the sour Grannies and the Galas melt into the cinnamon-y filling.

Dessert nirvana awaits you with a scoop of French vanilla ice cream.

Amy’s Classic Apple Pie

Butter Pie Dough | Baking Illustrated

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 c. flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 tbl. sugar
• 1/2 c. vegetable shortening, chilled
• 12 tbl. unsalted butter, cold, and cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 6-8 tbl. water

Directions

1. Mix together dry ingredients.
2. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender or two forks until the flour mixture has the texture of course sand.
3. Cut in the butter until the flour mixture is pale yellow and resembles coarse crumbs.
4. Sprinkle flour with 6 tablespoons of the ice water and mix until dough starts to come together. If dough still seems dry, add more ice water as needed.
5. Gather dough into 2 balls and flatten each into a 4-inch disk.
6. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 2 days before rolling.

Apple Filling | My own recipe

Ingredients

• 8 medium-sized apples, of different varieties (I used 2 Granny Smith, 3 Fuji, 3 Gala)
• Cinnamon and sugar to taste
• Juice and zest of half a lemon
• 1/4 c. flour

Directions

1. Peel, core, and cut the apples into 1/4-inch slices, tossing with lemon zest and juice.
2. Season with sugar and cinnamon to your liking.
3. Sprinkle flour over the apple mixture and mix thoroughly.

Putting it together: Preheat oven to 500F. Roll out one pie dough disk into a glass pie dish. Trim overhang to 1/2-inch. Refrigerate this dough while you roll out the second disk. Remove pie dish from refrigerator, put in apple filling, top with second crust. Trim overhang to 1/2-inch. Flute the two pie crusts together. Cut vents on the top crust.

Put the pie in the oven and lower the temperature to 425F. After 25 minutes, lower the temperature to 375F, loosely covering the pie with foil if the crust is browning to quickly. Bake for another 30 minutes.

Transfer pie to a cooling rack and cool to room temperature, at least 4 hours.

Alright, I’m finally sitting down to write this post.

To give away one of my best-kept baking secrets. (I’m reconsidering it as I’m writing this sentence.)

So I’ve been putting off this post for a while now, because I selfishly wanted to keep the glory and fame to myself. This is how much I love this pie. I live and die by this pumpkin pie recipe, guys. Yes, it’s *that* good! But now I’ll finally play nice and share the recipe with you. Such deliciousness should be shared and spread to as many people as possible. It is the season for giving thanks and being selfless, so let me try to embrace that.

May this recipe bring you the joy it’s brought to me! No more cloyingly sweet pumpkin pies that reek of corn syrup. No more one-note pumpkin pies that leave you wanting something more. This pie puts a smile in my belly every fall. Enjoy!

I don’t have much to say about this recipe. Follow it as it’s written and you should be golden. The one change that I made: adding one extra egg to the pie mixture. I like the firmer texture of the resulting pie. This pie is so good you can even omit the pecans, which I usually do since I don’t have the patience for them.

Honey Pecan Pumpkin Pie | Adapted from Bon Apetit, November 1997

Ingredients

For pecans
6 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
1 cup pecan halves (about 4 ounces)

1 Pastry/Pie dough disk, recipe of your choice

For filling
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1 15-ounce can solid pack pumpkin
1/3 cup honey
1 cup whipping cream
4 large eggs, +1 egg to use as an egg wash

For topping
1 cup chilled whipping cream
2 tablespoons honey

Directions

Make pecans:
Place large piece of foil on work surface. Stir sugar, honey, butter and salt in heavy medium skillet over medium-low heat until sugar dissolves, butter melts and syrup comes to simmer. Add pecans. Cook until syrup turns deep caramel color and bubbles thickly, stirring nuts occasionally to coat, about 9 minutes. Scrape onto foil. Working quickly, separate nuts with spoon. Cool completely. Place in airtight container. (Can be made 3 days ahead. Store at room temperature.)

Make pie:
Position rack in lowest third of oven and preheat to 350°F. Roll out dough disk on floured surface to 12- to 13-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter glass pie dish. Fold overhang under; crimp edge, forming high-standing rim.

Stir sugar and next 5 ingredients in large bowl. Whisk in pumpkin and honey, then cream and 4 eggs. Beat 1 egg in small bowl to blend. Brush inside of crust with some of beaten egg. Pour filling into crust.

Bake pie until filling is slightly puffed and begins to crack at edges, covering crust with foil if browning too quickly, about 1 hour. Cool on rack. (Can be made 8 hours ahead. Store at room temperature.)

Make topping:
Using electric mixer, beat cream and honey in medium bowl until stiff peaks form. Spoon into pastry bag fitted with star tip. Pipe rosettes of cream atop pie. Garnish with candied nuts. Serve, passing extra nuts separately.

Well I’m alive after a vacation in NYC and the lovely parting gift I got there, affectionately named The Stomach Flu. As I start the ball rolling again, today I present to you icebox pinwheel cookies. According to my copy of Joy of Cooking, icebox cookies got their name because the cookie dough needed to be refrigerated before rolling and cutting, or slicing, or what have you not. The refrigeration is in fact optional, and if you’re impatient like I am most of the time, you can just skip that step and use the recipe below for drop cookies.

I love pinwheel cookies because they look impressive, but require hardly any more work than any other type of sliced or rolled cookie dough. I like to bake mine for a minute or two longer because I enjoy these crispy.

Icebox Pinwheel Cookies | Adapted from Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 1/4 sticks butter (10 tbsp)
• 2/3 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 oz. bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, melted
• Additional 2 tbsp flour

 Directions

1. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. In another bowl, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Beat in egg and vanilla.
4. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients.
5. Divide the dough in half, and add the chocolate and additional flour to one half. Mix well.
6. Chill the two doughs until firm.
7. Roll the white and brown dough separately into equal size squares, about 1/8 to 1/4 in. thick.
8. Place one dough on the other and starting from one edge, roll them up together into a log.
9. Wrap the log in parchment paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate again until firm enough to slice.
10. Preheat oven to 375F.
11. Slice the log into 3/16-in. slices and arrange about 2 inches apart on cookie sheets. Bake until the cookies are lightly browned, 8-10 minutes.

Tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, parmesan, asiago, romano.

Okay, so a couple of things. First, JM has effectively ruined pizza for me. I’m going to have to carry a bottle of white truffle oil around in my purse all the time now… you know, “just in case.” Secondly, if you’re going to make pizza, please get a pizza stone. Please, please, with a chunk of mozzarella on top.

I wrote about my pizza dough recipe in a previous post, and while I felt like I had the dough perfect, I sometimes had issues getting it to cook properly. Sometimes my pizzas ended up a soggy mess, other times the dough rose too much in the oven. Last night I learned the secret to fixing these issues: high heat and a pizza stone. I found that I had been cooking up my pies at too low of a temperature; 425 degrees F instead of 500 degrees F.

Anchovies and pizza. For reals.

And then there’s the pizza stone. Oh glorious pizza stone, you have been absent from my life for much too long. Position this guy on a rack in the top third of your oven, crank the oven up to 500 degrees F, and then let it preheat for a minimum of 45 minutes. The stone ensures the crust starts cooking the minute it hits the oven, thus browning it and giving it little time to rise. Result? Heavenly crisped and browned crust. Bonus tip: rub the dough with olive oil, sea salt, and ground pepper and then par-bake it for a minute or two before throwing on the toppings.

So a while back I did a post about this Espresso Chocolate Cheesecake. At that particular time, I wasn’t baking it for any particular reason other than to fatten up friends and coworkers. I whipped the recipe out again this time for a special occasion though. It was LC’s birthday this weekend, and I was out of ideas for what kind of cake to make her. Luckily KC gave me an easy way out: cheesecake.

Now can I just start by saying that my cheesecakes never come out pretty? They always taste great, but they never resemble anything close to what you find in a restaurant or store. Go figure. I’ll have to work on it. But hey, the awesomet hing about a cheesecake is that even if it’s ugly, you can mask it with a nice coating of chocolate.

This is a really rich cheesecake, and with the addition of the extra layer of chocolate ganache covering it, I felt like I needed some fruit to offset the chocolately-ness. It worked out really well actually, except the strawberries threatened to slide off the cake. Note: Let the ganache set a little while before trying to lay down the fruit.

You can find the recipe for the cheesecake in my previous post. Chocolate ganache is disgustingly easy to make, and here’s that recipe:

• 3/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 tbl butter
• 6 oz of semisweet chocolate

Combine cream and butter over low heat on the stove until it barely simmers. Add the chocolate, let it sit for a minute or two, and stir until all chunks are gone. Pour over cake, or allow it to cool to a spreading consistency if you want to use it as a frosting.

Padron peppers… are stupidly delicious. There’s no other way to put it. Stupidly delicious, completely addicting, and like playing Russian roulette. The background on these peppers is that they are extremely seasonal. They usually peak in the summer, so I first had them this past August in Seattle at a Basque pintxos (tapas) bar. Typically very mellow and nutty in flavor when cooked, they say that every one in ten of these peppers is super spicy — I unfortunately got one of those ten in Seattle. Padrons are picked when they are immature and before the spiciness becomes concentrated in the seeds. Every now and again the pepper ends up being a bit more along than its siblings. Darn you! My mouth recovered only just enough for me to polish off the rest of the plate.

Cooking them is not only easy, but also quick. Pour enough oil to cover the bottom of a sauce pan, and let it heat over a medium flame. Toss in the peppers (I added garlic for the heck of it) and let them cook about 1-2 minutes before tossing and turning them. They’ll start to blister and char. Salt them with some sea salt or other coarse salt, put ‘em on a plate, and eat! No more than 4-5 minutes in the pan. Told you it was easy!

Helpful tip: When cleaning the peppers, wipe them down with a damp towel. Don’t bother washing them in tons of water unless you plan on drying each one thoroughly. You don’t want any stray water to cause the hot oil to spit at you.

The aftermath.

Ah, yes, the classic yellow cupcake with chocolate frosting. It’s the Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines cupcake that us Americans grew up with. For a recent potluck, I volunteered to bring a batch of cupcakes. However, I didn’t want them to be out-of-the-box type of cupcakes. I wanted to be inspired by the classic combination, but not recreate them with their cloying sweetness. So instead I turned to my copy of Joy of Cooking (which I am finding to be indispensable these days).

I like the cake recipes in Joy of Cooking because although many of them contain an extra, slightly annoying step, they produce much better results than other cake recipes. This extra step involves separating the eggs and whipping the whites into a meringue before mixing them into the batter. The method introduces more air into the batter, thus allowing for more leavening during the baking process. It’s worth the extra bowl and beaters to wash!

Four-Egg Yellow Cake | Joy of Cooking

Three 8- or 9-inch round layers, (or 24 cupcakes)
This is a slightly modernized version of the old 1-2-3-4 Cake.
Have all ingredients at room temperature, about 70°F. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour three 8 x 2-inch or 9 x 2-inch round cake pans or line the bottoms with wax or parchment paper.
Whisk together thoroughly in a bowl:
2 2⁄3 cups sifted cake flour
2 1⁄4 teaspoons baking powder
1⁄2 teaspoon salt
Combine in another bowl or in a liquid measure cup:
1 cup milk
1 1⁄2 teaspoons vanilla or 1 teaspoon vanilla plus 1⁄2 teaspoon almond extract
Beat in a large bowl until creamy.
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
Gradually add and beat on high speed until light, 3 to 5 minutes:
1 1⁄2 cups sugar
Beat in one at a time:
4 large egg yolks
On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the milk mixture in 2 parts, beating until smooth. Using clean beaters, beat in a large bowl on medium speed until soft peaks form:
4 large egg whites
1⁄4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Gradually add, beating on high speed:
1⁄4 cup sugar
Beat until the peaks are stiff but not dry. Use a rubber spatula to fold one-quarter of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, then fold in the remaining whites. Divide the batter among the pans and spread evenly. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 35 minutes.

Chocolate Mouse Frosting | Joy of Cooking

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups powdered sugar (also called confectioner’s or icing sugar)
• ½ cup milk
• 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped or grated
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/8 tsp. salt

In a medium heatproof bowl, whisk together eggs, sugar, milk, and salt. Set the bowl in a large skillet of barely-simmering water and heat it, stirring constantly, until it reaches 160º F.

Remove the bowl from the heat and add the butter, chocolate, and vanilla extract, stirring until melted and smooth.

Set the bowl in an ice bath. Beat it on high speed until the frosting cools and begins to hold shape – the frosting will become a light brown.

Use immediately or refrigerate for up to four days. Soften and beat smooth before using refrigerated frosting.