Chocolate

Peanut Butter Marshmallow Bites

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These little, unassuming bite-size goodies made quite an impression last weekend.  I brought them to a Christmas party where they were completely devoured and raved about.  I saw one of the party guests 2 days later and she asked me for the recipe.  I hadn’t had such a great response to a dessert in, well…ever!  I wish I could say they were my own creation, but alas, they were not.  I got the recipe in my 12 Days of Cookies email from the Food Network.  This was Day 10: Sunny’s Crunchy Peanut Butter S’more Bites.

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If you go to the Food Network site and read the review on these cookies, you will wonder why I made them.  Bad reviews on taste and preparation.  What was I thinking?  Well, I wasn’t.  However, with a few modifications to the recipe, they taste yummy (still very sweet of course) but still make quite a mess of your kitchen.  Sometimes you have to take the bad with the good!

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Witch Hat Cookies

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witch6Happy Halloween!  I made these cookies for the trick-or-treaters at Ben’s office.  I thought they would be more fun than little bags of candy, and too cute for words.  I also thought they would be quick and easy.  Cute, yes.  Quick and easy, kinda.

This Halloween treat can be made in a day, but I spread the preparation out over 3 days.

Day 1: Bake chocolate sugar cookies.

Day 2: Brush ice cream cones with chocolate and let set.

Day 3: Assemble & decorate hats.

My original plan was to make royal icing to decorate the hats, but as the deadline approached and a stack of about 100 papers needed grading, I broke down and bought tubes of Wilton icing in orange, black, green and purple.  As I completed the last hat I was very thankful that I’d made this adjustment.  Sometimes you just have to take shortcuts.

The Wilton icing tubes are pretty great.  You simply attach Wilton decorating tips and get creative.  It’s easy to switch out tips and the colors are nice and vibrant.  It’s often hard to achieve really vibrant color when you color your own icing, so this saves time and the stress of making the perfect color you’re looking for.

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Witch Hat Cookies

  • 24 chocolate sugar cookies
  • 24 sugar ice cream cones
  • 1 package chocolate candy coating
  • 2 large bags M&M’s
  • Various icings, sprinkles, decorations, etc.
  1. Melt chocolate coating according to package instructions.
  2. Use a pastry brush to coat all the cones with chocolate.  I found it easiest to place a few fingers in the cone to hold it while I brushed on the chocolate.  Stand up on parchment paper and let set.
  3. Fill the ice cream cone with your choice of candies.  Candy corn, M&M’s, Skittles, whatever.
  4. Use some of the frosting to pipe around the base of the ice cream cone.  Top with the cookie and flip over to set.
  5. Decorate as desired.

These are a fun treat and would make a fun party favor.  Happy Halloween!

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Chocolate Sugar Cookies

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There is something very special in store for the trick-or-treaters at BMWB this Friday!  To prepare for this treat, I had to make some chocolate sugar cookies.  These cookies were easy to put together, did not require any chilling, or rolling, and tasted sweet, crunchy and rich.  They will also be the perfect shape and texture for my Halloween treats.

10-25-2009This recipe originally came from  my dear friend, Martha Stewart.  I found it on How to Eat a Cupcake.  I doubled the recipe to make these cookies and ended up with about 45 medium sized cookies.

I only needed 30 for my Halloween goodies, so I had some dough left over.  I thought about freezing it and using it later, but then I found a roll of Rolos hiding in my cabinet leftover from my candy bar blondies.  Maybe, just maybe, I could wrap the dough around a rolo and bake it to create a cookie with a nice caramel surprise inside.  Genius!

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These cookies turned out to be quite delicious.  I think that there are a lot of candies that could be hidden inside this cookie dough.  The dough is sturdy and not too sticky, so would probably be a good dough to experiment with.  I will definitely make these cookies again.  Easy, chewy, delicious and versatile.

Chocolate Sugar Cookies (Courtesy of Martha Stewart and How to Eat a Cupcake)
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder
  • 2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 cup vegetable shortening, melted and cooled
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  1. Preheat oven to 375F. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.
  2. Put butter and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Mix in melted shortening (or butter). Add egg and vanilla; mix until creamy. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until just combined.
  3. Using a 1 inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 2 inches apart. Bake until edges are firm, 10-13 minutes.  Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 days.
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Daring Bakers: Macarons

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The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

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One of my best memories is eating a traditional French macaron at Harrods in London 12 years ago.  A delicate, light, crunchy exterior with a sweet luscious filling.  They were about the size of your palm, and I think we went back to Harrods a few times just to buy more.  I haven’t had a real macaron that delicious since.  This challenge made me crave those macarons and want to recreate them.  Was I successful in this endeavor?  No way.  But, it was still a fun challenge.

I made two kinds of macarons.  One plain almond with a white chocolate eggnog ganache filling.  The second was a chocolate macaron with chocolate ganache.

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Dark Chocolate Marshmallow Crispy Bars

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When things start to fall on you when you open the pantry door, you know some action must be taken.  A box of Rice Krispies came sliding out of the pantry yesterday while I was trying to reach something else that was stashed underneath it.  As fate would have it, my Martha Stewart cookie of the Day recipe was Crispy Chocolate Marshmallow Treats.  The ingredient list is simple and short: butter, marshmallows, cocoa, rice krispies and semi-sweet chocolate.

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I wasn’t expecting these to be anything special, but they were so much better than a normal rice krispy.  These are more adult in flavor, and not as gooey and sticky as the original.  I used Hershey’s dark cocoa and drizzled semi-sweet chocolate on top.  The chocolate makes them decadent, dense and delicious.

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Sweet Saturday: White and Dark Chocolate Coffee Brownies

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It was 70° two days ago.  Right now it is 39°, cloudy and misty.  I’m wearing long pants, a sweatshirt and my fake fur lined boots…and I like it.

I am starting to truly like cool weather and I’ve always loved the things associated with this time of year.  Changing leaves, pumpkins, sweaters, warm socks, soup, and before you know it, it’s Christmas!  Anyway…

The cooler weather inspired me to bake something warm, rich and chocolate-y yesterday, so I found a basic and easy brownie recipe, halved it to better serve 2 people, and made use of what I had in my pantry.

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Firecracker Chocolate Bar

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I saw this confection at Wal-Mart the other day,  and I was intrigued.  I was also impressed that Wal-Mart was selling something so trendy and chic… in the world of chocolate anyway.  The bar is made by Chuao Chocolatier.

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Online this bar goes for $6.00 a piece.  I got mine at Wal-Mart for $4.00!  Anyway, I was not expecting to like this combination of dark chocolate, chipotle, salt and popping candy…aka Pop Rocks!  Pop Rocks?  Even if I didn’t like it, I didn’t care.  How could someone not at least try something with Pop Rocks in it?  I hadn’t had Pop Rocks in a while, and I knew there was no better time than now to have them as an adult.  This is an “adult” candy bar.  The dark 60 % cacao chocolate, spicy chipotle and salt would not appeal to many kids.

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Daring Bakers: Dobos Torte

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The August 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers’ cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

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This challenge really snuck up on me.  I guess I could blame it on the fact that last week was my first week of school, but really I am just a little forgetful sometimes and I have a bad habit of putting things off.  This week was really too busy to make this cake, so I had to wait until yesterday.  I have never baked and assembled a cake this involved so quickly!  It still took me a while, about 3 hours start to finish.  This is an accomplishment, in my opinion, especially when you consider the 6 sponge cake layers, chocolate buttercream, the caramel coated triangle cake pieces and assembly.

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Daring Bakers: Cookies

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I must admit this, I was not thrilled about this months challenge at first.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love cookies.  Almost all kinds of cookies.  I even like when they take all day to make.   My issue with this challenge was that I made one of the cookie recipes a few years ago with less than stellar results, so I was kinda bummed.  The other cookie also seemed a little boring.  I went into this challenge with a rotten attitude…but I came out a very happy girl.

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The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole     at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I made the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies first.

Day 1: I made the cookies a day before I planned to make the marshmallow and cover them.  The cookie dough was easy to deal with and the cookies made my house smell so wonderful while they baked.  I tried the cookies alone, and I found them to be a bit dry, but they had good flavor.

Day 2: I’ve made these cookies before, so I have made marshmallow before.  I really enjoy making food that starts out with a very ordinary and unassuming list of ingredients and miraculously becomes something completely different!  That’s why marshmallow is so fun to make.  It creates quite a sticky mess, but is worth it.  mallow1

Be sure to use good vanilla as this is the only flavoring in the marshmallow besides sugar. I recommend Nielson-Massey Vanilla Bean paste or Madagascar Vanilla.

The marshmallow was beautiful and piped out quite nicely onto the cookies.  I let them set at this point for a few hours at room temperature.

The process of covering things in chocolate and I do not get along very well.  Unless I am using that chocolate bark, my chocolate doesn’t ever harden completely without putting it in the fridge or freezer.  And yet again, I had that problem with these cookies.  They looked beautiful coming out of their chocolate bath, but even after 3 hours the chocolate was still wet.  So, in the fridge they went!  The chocolate hardened and then we were able to taste them!  The chocolate formed a nice hard shell around the soft gooey marshmallow and crumbly cookie.  I liked these cookies, but think they might require more work than they’re worth in the taste department.  They are beautiful and impressive, though.

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Fruit…Covered in Chocolate

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I had an incredible, dare I say life changing, experience of tasting some treats from a specialty food store in Amarillo yesterday.  We’ve all tried chocolate covered strawberries, but they seem a little bit dated and ordinary to me.  Not to say that I don’t like them, I do.  This may not be news to everyone, but it was news to me…you can cover different fresh fruits in chocolate!

I had the opportunity to try a banana coated half in white chocolate and half in dark chocolate.  Chocolate and banana are great together, so this didn’t seem totally out of the ordinary.  And it was delicious.  The combination of texture, crunchy chocolate and soft banana.  The flavors were also spectacular.  I preferred the white chocolate side, but that may just be me.

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I also tried dark chocolate covered red grapes.  I was skeptical at first and didn’t expect them to pair well together.  Well, I was wrong.  Again, the texture contrast and the taste combinations were great. (more…)

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