Chocolate Truffles

This isn't a very good Halloween-y post, but I guarrantee I'll post some of those starting next week. For now, I made these on Sunday. I halved the recipe without any trouble, though that did mean that things cooked faster. I used vanilla extract, and just used toll house chocolate chips because that was what I had. If I make them again, I definitely want to use better quality chocolate, but they were still good and the recipe still worked!

I put them in a cute, handmade box and gave them to my boyfriend for our 6-month anniversary :)

Chocolate Truffles
Recipe by Martha Stewart

8 ounces best-quality bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon liqueur, such as triple sec or framboise (optional)
Unsweetened cocoa powder, for rolling

Put chocolate into a large heatproof bowl. Bring cream just to a boil in a small saucepan over medium-high heat; pour over chocolate in bowl. Stir in liqueur, if desired. Cover with plastic wrap; let stand 10 minutes. Stir until smooth. Let stand until thick, about 15 minutes.

Pour chocolate mixture into a shallow 8-inch dish or pie plate. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until mixture is very cold and set but still pliable, about 30 minutes.

Using a teaspoon or a 1/2-inch melon baller, scoop balls of chocolate mixture, transferring them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper as you work. Refrigerate truffles 10 minutes.

Using hands dusted with cocoa powder, dip each truffle in cocoa powder to coat, then quickly shape truffle into a rough round. Refrigerate truffles in an airtight container until ready to serve, up to 2 weeks; before serving, reshape into rounds, and roll each truffle in cocoa powder, if desired.

Dorie Greenspan's Chewy, Chunky Blondies

Finally I baked again. I'll probably bake once a week and update on the weekends from now on until I get a break from school. For this recipe I used butterscotch chips, left out the walnuts, and for the chocolate used chopped up pieces of Ghiradelli 70% cacao for 4 ounces that was the bar, and then about a fourth a cup for semi-sweet chocolate chips. I'd been wanting to make something with coconut and butterscotch for a while, so I'm glad I finally got around to doing it!

Chewy, Chunky Blondies
Recipe from Dorie Greenspan's
Baking: From My Home to Yours
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups (packed) light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or 1 cup store-bought chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips or Heath Toffee Bits
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter a 9×13-inch baking pan and put it on a baking sheet.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add both sugars and beat for another 3 minutes, or until well incorporated. Add the eggs one by one, beating for 1 minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing just until they disappear into the batter. Using a rubber spatula, stir in the chips, nuts and coconut. Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and use the spatula to even the top as best you can.

Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the blondies comes out clean. The blondies should pull away from the sides of the pan a little and the top should be a nice honey brown. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for about 15 minutes before turning the blondies out onto another rack. Invert onto a rack and cool the blondies to room temperature right side up.

Cut into 32 bars, each roughly 2-1/4 x 1-1/2 inches.

My New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is my first CCC recipe I'm posting. I used to only make the original Toll House recipe, and then found a great recipe that I thought would be my favorite, and then I decided I wanted to find a crispy chocolate chip cookie recipe and found this. Although not crisy entirely, it's crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside...and oh my god, this is the best chocolate chip cookie I have ever made. EVER.

After the first bite I thought I was dreaming. And then got scared that I would end up eating the entire batch (all 15 monstrous cookies), but remembered that they had to go somewhere (to my friends...) so that I couldn't eat anymore. Good excuse. Plus, honestly, this cookie filled me up. Just one cookie...albeit the size of 3 or 4...so good. I honeslty don't want to find out the nutritional value of these suckers.

I didn't have any cake flour so I substituted with 1/8 cup cornstarch + 7/8 cup AP flour.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe from My Madison Bistro

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cake flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
12 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325*F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and position oven racks in the middle of oven.

Sift together dry ingredients into a small bowl. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the melted butter and sugars, and stir with a wooden spoon until mixed. Add the egg and yolk and stir until well mixed. Add vanilla, stir to combine.

Add flour mixture to sugar mixture, stir until just a trace of flour remains. Add the chocolate chips and stir to combine. Using a large spoon, mound about 1/3 c of dough (these are large cookies) onto the baking sheet, about six cookies per sheet.

Bake for 16-19 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Cool for five minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack.

Banana Bread

I've been wanting to bake banana bread for a while, so as soon as my landlord claimed my oven fixed, I started gathering the ingredients I needed for when I had time. So on Saturday I finally made it! And it worked! Actually, I was impatient and so the bananas weren't really overripe and it still worked great. It wasn't sweet, which I didn't want anyway. My oven still has a lot of kinks that I don't understand yet so after 50 minutes the top got a little overbrown in some places but that's okay that was my fault. Next time if I make this recipe again, I want to try adding the walnuts (and using reallly ripe bananas)! I used Fage 0% greek yogurt because I forgot about buying plain yogurt and that's what I had. Next time I might want to try using not low or nonfat yogurt, but I love greek yogurt so I might still have to use that.

Banana Bread
Adapted from Cook's Illustrated by Christina

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups walnuts, toasted and chopped coarse (optional)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 very ripe, soft, darkly speckled large bananas, mashed well (about 1 1/2 cups)
1/4 cup plain yogurt
2 large eggs, beaten lightly
6 tbsp of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Turn on the oven to 350F.

Butter and flour the bottom of a loaf pan.

Mix the mashed banana, eggs, yogurt, melted butter and vanilla in a large bowl.

Stir the walnuts into the banana mixture (doing so will reduce the risk of over-mixing).

Sift flour, sugar, salt and baking soda into the banana mixture.

Using a rubber spatula, very, very, very gently mix the flour with the wet ingredients. Stop as soon as the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be chunky instead of smooth.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a wooden skewer comes out clean after inserted into the bread.

Let the bread cool in the pan; slice and serve.

Waffle Frolic

I'm happy to say that I'm finally DONE with this last week before my 4-day weekend...it was a long, long, longgg week. So I don't have a new recipe as promised, but tomorrow I'm planning on testing my oven to see if it really DOES work or if it is indeed broken, so there will be new food on Tuesday!

Instead I'll post pictures of this yummyyy waffle place I went with some friends last night, Waffle Frolic. Gooood waffles. I'd been wanting waffles for a while, haha. Although it might have been a little pricey considering hey, you know, they're waffles, and the toppings aren't that extraordinary, I thought it was worth it (since I don't have a waffle maker and access to these toppings would give me more than what I want for a larger price...if that makes sense). So basically at Waffle Frolic, you go in and choose your type of waffle and then order ingredients separately in any combination you could want.

The waffles above are my friend Marrisa's waffles, with lemon curd and pumpkin butter and I'm not sure what else. I should have tried at least one of those two things, they sound so good...

So the above waffles are what I got, with blueberry yogurt (made in the restaurant, apparently) and strawberries. Yumm I love strawberries. I was really tempted to get whipped cream but I really, really like yogurt.

I'm posting this one last cuz it's most impressive, haha. These are David's waffles, with I guess strawberries, chocolate? and whipped cream...man waffles are so good.

Brownie cut-out Cookies

Yesterday night I decided I was way too stressed to even write a post for an old recipe. This morning I decided that, it was okay, I could spend two minutes writing up a post...so here I am and here it is. I may not post Tuesday but I PROMISE you, even if next Saturday is not a new post, the following Tuesday WILL BE!!

These were fun to make, and were a good chocolate roll-out cookie recipe. I made them with my BFFL Kristin, who got me the cookie cutters :)

Brownie roll-out cookies
Recipe by Deb's mom

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup lightly salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Whisk dry flour, salt and baking powder in bowl and set aside. Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa in mixer. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for at least one hour.

Roll out cookie dough on floured counter. Cut into desired shapes, brushing extra deposits of flour off the top. (It does disappear once baked, though, so don’t overly fret if they go into the oven looking white.) Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 8 to 11 minutes (the former for 1/8-inch thick cookies, the latter for 1/4-inch cookies) until the edges are firm and the centers are slightly soft and puffed.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool.