Chocolate Overload

 My poor book club. This is what I'm bringing for dinner.

At the end of my Intro to Baking class I was drowning in baked goods. I ended up bring home three cakes one day and had the good sense to freeze two of them. One was a genoise cake which I turned into a tasty trifle at Christmas (resolution for the new year, take pictures of things and also try to take better pictures of things).

The other cake was a devil's food cake. I have never been a fan of devil's foods cake but that may have something to do with the fact that the only form I have had it in is a Snackwells cake/cookie thing. Remember Snackwells? Low fat cookies and such. They were also low on deliciousness.

Since this has been my only experience with this kind of cake I had no idea what to do with it and I also wasn't very excited to try to do something with it.
Enter Christmas.

For Christmas I received many wonderful things. My brother got me this book on a recommendation of a friend of his who is a pastry chef in New York. In this book is a really good looking devil's food cake. It has layers of caramel and dark chocolate ganache. The frosting is dark chocolate ganache coated with toasted cake crumbs. Now who can I make eat this cake? My book club. I hope it is good.

The crumb coating makes the cake look "classy" in my husband's words but I felt it lacked a little something extra. In the book there is a perfectly placed dollop of ganache on top of the cake. I tried to replicate it but it always ended up looking like a turd. I have been wanting to try my hand at making roses so I warmed up the ganache a little and hoped for the best. I don't know if you are supposed to pipe roses out of ganache but I did.

I made 5 roses and they each turned out a little different. The first ones were smaller and tighter since the chocolate was a little cooler. The edges of the petals were rough which I think made kind of a cool effect. The last 2 I did were bigger and softer looking since the chocolate had warmed up while I was using it. After chilling in the fridge for a while I chose one of the bigger ones and stuck it on the middle of the cake. Done and done.

Growl

I have been debating whether to even blog about today. It was one of those days that I would like to block out.
6:55am I went to my physical therapy appointment
7:00am I was told my appointment was actually at 8:30 so I went back home
8:30  I returned to physical therapy. I was told that there was a cancellation at 7 and I could have gotten in.
10am class starts
10:30 getting my mise en place together for making chocolate chip cookies
10:35 I say to the girl next to me "I kind of like this mise en place business. This way I won't forget anything like I usually do at home."
10:50 I put my cookies in the oven
10:52 I start to clean up my space and find my baking soda hiding under my parchment paper. Curses.

I blame being frazzled from the earlier appointment mix up.

Luckily, it turns out, baking soda mostly acts as a browning agent in cookies. My cookies taste fine, they are just a little pale and sickly looking.

Alright, none of these incidents are a big deal as I reflect on them. I am a bit of a perfectionist though and slightly competitive (slightly may be a slight understatement). The last thing I wanted was to screw up the first time baking something in my first baking class. It was bound to happen. Also, the last thing I wanted was for the instructor to point it out to the whole class. That happened too. Now we all know what happens if you forget the baking soda. Now you know too.

Now I'm glad I shared. Sort of.

*Update: I just stepped in dog pee.

Waste not...

One of my book clubs recently read this book on food waste. I knew that ridiculous amounts of food get wasted everyday but I was not aware of the environmental effects that come along with food waste. Long story very short, food releases methane as it decomposes and methane is bad. Plus it is just wrong to throw away perfectly good food. This book changed me. After reading it I am much better about composting and trying to use all the food that I have in the house before I buy more. I can hear the book whispering as I'm about to wash food scraps down the sink. I see it on my shoulder as I am about to throw a banana peel in the trash. I feel it judging me when I think about going out to eat instead of eating what is in my fridge. I guess haunts me would be a more accurate description. This book haunts me.

The ghostly form of the book popped up while I was canning raspberry rosewater syrup yesterday. I found myself with a whole lot of raspberry pulp. The juice went to the syrup but the meat was left behind. I tried it and it was delicious, I couldn't just throw it away. Eating it plain didn't seem like a great plan. Mixing it into yogurt seemed boring. I decided to bake it into bars.

First I made a simple crust of sugar, butter, flour and salt. I pressed the crust into an 8x8 square glass dish and baked it for 15 minutes. Then I smoothed the raspberry bits over the top and baked again for about 15 minutes. When I pulled it out of the oven I spread dark chocolate chips over the top. Once they were melty I smoothed them out and VIOLA! Dark chocolate raspberry bars!

Thank you book ghost for helping me create this delicious dessert.

The real deal

Here are the real chocolate chip cookies that I have been wanting ever since the ice cream cookie dough experiment. This is my Aunt Georgia's recipe from one of her many small town church lady cookbooks. She made these cookies for me a couple months ago when I went down to visit her in Iowa. I was blown away with how tasty they were. I usually just go with the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips and they never turn out this good. She gave me the recipe, and after some explaining (do any of you know what oleo is?) I was excited to try them out.

They turn out to be the prettiest cookies I've made. And delicious.

Aunt Georgia's Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup butter (or  oleo I guess)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I used Kosher because it is yummy)

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix butter, oil, and both sugars together until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again until smooth. Add the dry ingredients in two additions. Add the chocolate chips. Bake for 8-10 minutes*. Cool on wire cooling rack

*Note: They are probably done before you think they are. They firm up a lot on the wire rack. Bake until the edges are golden and they are firm enough to transfer from baking sheet to rack.

Watch It!

So far, everyone I know has been really supportive of my decision to try something new. I have gotten lots of comments, mostly variations on two specific comments.
#1. You are going to be very popular now.
Rebuttal - Um, I already am.

#2. Aren't you worried about gaining weight? Variations: You better be careful, I hope you don't lose your figure, you better keep going to yoga, be careful with how much tasting you do, I've never seen a skinny baker.
Rebuttal - I found a skinny baker here (co-author of my favorite bread book).

Most of these comments came from people I don't know very well and will probably never see again. Why do they care? I really hadn't thought about gaining weight until it was all I heard about. Then I stopped thinking about it because I thought it was dumb. Now I am thinking about it again because I am blogging about it. I firmly believe that you can be a pastry chef and be healthy. I firmly believe that you can be in love with dessert and be healthy. I believe in moderation. I believe in staying active. I believe in maintaining whatever weight makes you happy. I will never be Hollywood thin because I would rather eat half a chocolate bar when I get home from work, preferably followed by a glass of wine and then maybe pizza. I am fine with that.

I also believe that you can indulge without really indulging. There are fantastic things to be done with fresh fruit. With egg whites and sugar you can perform miracles (called meringues). I performed one such miracle yesterday by making my first angel food cake. The most tedious part of making angel food cake it beating the egg whites. If you have a stand mixer you will be fine, if not you will get your work out for the day.

Everything went according to plan because I actually remembered to read the directions first. I used a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks and went with the chocolate version of the cake. My favorite part was letting it cool upside down on a bottle. I was nervous about it at first but it did not tip over or fall out so now I think it was fun.

In the end I decided that it should have a little extra something. I am always looking for reasons to use Creme de Violette so I melted some white chocolate and mixed in a shot of the liqueur. As the finishing touch I added whipped cream and blackberries and I was happy. It isn't the prettiest cake I've ever made but it is probably the healthiest and it even tasted great.

Decadence without guilt can be had.





*But just in case, I signed up for a 10k.