cranberry almond biscotti

One of the first things that Erin named when I repeatedly begged asked her which cookies she wanted to make this week was biscotti.  Biscotti?  Really?  Well, I guess considering our love for the world of Starbucks and all of the phenomena it has caused, it makes sense. But still, I was baffled.  Not that pumped to make them, but still excited to cross it off my baking to-do list.  Baking this was really fun - we even toasted the almond ourselves, which, I will enthusiastically add, was one of the most amazing smells that I've ever been responsible for in the kitchen. I don't know anyone that doesn't love the smell of toasted almond.

Admittedly so, biscotti won this little war. I honestly forgot how great these cookies are until I snuck a little taste as we finished baking them this morning. I used to love biscotti with coffee, but for some reason, I honestly just...forgot about it.  And you know what else?  I always hated cranberry/almond/orange flavored things, but this biscotti is truly great.  It's so simple and basic, but it really does embody holiday baking. 

We decided on this recipe because it not only came from two incredible reputable sources, but it was basic enough to adapt to our own tastes. We decided on adding in cranberries, which was the perfect addition to this recipe - I really don't think anything else would compliment the orange zest, orange liqueur, and toasted almond quite like the cranberry does. A great holiday breakfast treat to go with your morning coffee!

Cranberry Almond Biscotti

Courtesy of Bon Apetit and Smitten Kitchen

3¼ cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/3 teaspoon salt

1½ cups sugar

10 tablespoons (1 ¼ sticks) unsalted butter, melted

3 large eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon Grand Marnier or orange liqueur

1 tablespoon orange zest

1 cup whole almonds, toasted, coarsely chopped or sliced almonds

1 large egg white

1. Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. 
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into medium bowl. 
3. Mix sugar, melted butter, 3 eggs, vanilla extract, orange liqueur and zest in large bowl. 
4. Add flour mixture to egg mixture and stir with wooden spoon until well blended. Mix in almonds.
5. Divide dough in half. Using floured hands, shape each dough half into 13½-inch-long, 2 ½-inch-wide log. Transfer both logs to prepared baking sheet, spacing apart. 
6. Whisk egg white in small bowl until foamy; brush over top and sides of each dough log.
7. Bake logs until golden brown (logs will spread), about 30 minutes. 
8. Cool logs completely on sheet on rack, about 25 minutes. Maintain oven temperature.
9. Transfer logs to work surface; discard parchment paper. Using serrated knife, cut logs on diagonal into ½-inch-wide slices. Arrange slices, cut side down, on same baking sheet. Bake 12 minutes. Turn biscotti over; bake until just beginning to color, about 8 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool.

mint condition brownie cookies

It's Thanksgiving!  Time to give thanks, and how better than to bake an extraordinary amount of goodies with your sister?  Inspired by one of mine and my sister's old favorite spots, Caribou Coffee, these cookies combine dark chocolate and peppermint for a perfectly moist and fulfilling cookie.  I believe Erin's exact words were that next to her favorite flour-less chocolate cake, "these are the best things to come out of this kitchen."

Score one for team Melissa and Erin.

Want to know another great thing?  These are really easy and fun to make.  First, you combine dark chocolate chips, brown sugar, butter, and a teeny bit of water, and melt this over a double boiler.

You may or may not decide to make a little snack out of what yields from this.  I'll let you decide if you can resist.

Next, you just combine this with the egg, peppermint extract, and then gradually add in the flour mixture.  The dough becomes quite thick, but not to worry - they won't be dense or dry in the least.  Let the dough chill for an hour in the fridge before baking, and then roll them into even-sized golf balls.  Look how beautifully cracked the cookies become!

Then, top them with whole Andes mints.  We bought the chopped baking pieces, but this became a little messy.  I think just cutting the regular sized mints in half would be perfect.  But these were still so pretty.  Festive, if you will.

Mint Condition Brownie Cookies 
Adapted from Lovin' From the Oven

3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
12 ounces dark chocolate chips, or whole bar coarsely chopped
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
Andes candies

1. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda in a small bowl and set aside.
2. In a double boiler, combine butter, sugar, chocolate, and water - heat until melted and smooth.
3. Pour into a large mixing bowl and let stand until cool (about 10 minutes).
4. After your chocolate mixture has cooled, add the eggs (one at a time) and beat with an electric mixture on high speed. Mix in your extract. Finally, slowly mix in the flour mixture and stir until well-blended.
5. Chill batter for at least one hour.
6. After chilled, heat oven to 350°F.   Roll the dough into walnut/golf ball-sized balls. Place two inches apart on baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes.
7. Right after you've taken your baked cookies out of the oven, place a mint chocolate candy. Allow to melt slightly and spread with a spoon.

apple pizza

I have one word for you. Nostalgia.

Let me explain. Back when we were, oh, 13? 14? Katie and I used to sleep over at each other's house and bake. Most of the time it consisted of complete messes in the kitchen, much to the dismay of our parents.  But, it's always been our thing. We bake. Whatever.


So when Katie texted me last week that we "need to make apple pizza ASAP", I happily obliged.  The recipe that we used when we were young was super simple (I mean, I learned it in Life Skills in 8th grade, so don't give me much credit here), so I really wanted to modify it to mature with our more refined palates.  My first instinct?  Brown that butter in the crust. Always an excellent choice.

Oh, fall.  This dessert is just so comforting and satisfying.  And simple.  Enjoy, friends.


Apple Pizza
from yours truly

Crust:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar1 cup flour, sifted

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Brown the butter in a medium saucepan.
3. In a small bowl, mix the sugars together. Add the hot butter and let sit until cooled to room temperature, about 10 minutes.
4. Once cooled, add the flour and mix gently just until dough comes together.
5. Pat dough evenly into a 12 inch pizza pan.

Apple topping:
2-3 small apples, cut in thin slices
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 cup granulated sugar

1. In a medium sized bowl, mix cinnamon and sugar. Toss in apples to coat.
2. Place apples in pan with dough.

Crumb topping:
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup quick oats
1/8 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour (or less, depending on desired consistency)

1. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add in oats and flour and mix until small crumbs form. (You may want to add less or more flour depending on if you want your crumbs to melt into the apples or stay formed.)
2. Sprinkle crumbs over apple mixture until all crevasses are filled.
3. Bake at 325 for 10-12 minutes until crust is golden brown around the edges.

coconut cake

Acts of service.  That's my language of love.  Well, right behind a tie between words of affirmation and quality time.  Do you even know what I'm talking about?  If you haven't read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, it's my strong recommendation that you remedy this fact quickly.  It's just one of those books that you have to read if you're a human being.  It's pretty self-explanatory, but the concept behind this book is so simple, yet so few people ever realize these characteristics of themselves, but rather use them as tools for arguments in their relationships.  Anyway, it won't let you down.  Go get it.


So, acts of service.  I always knew that I was much more of a one-on-one kind of a girl rather than a just-a-face-in-the-crowd girl, so the quality time thing didn't really shock me.  Words of affirmation?  I guess now I realize that I do try to tell those around me that I love them, and that I do need to hear reassurance in return.  But acts of service is something that I've battled with for a while.  Call me a doormat, or a people pleaser, but I really like doing nice things for people.  It's not selfless, because I get enjoyment out of baking people cookies, or doing laundry for someone, or even cleaning a bathroom (yeah, you heard me right.)  But either way, it was really interesting to read about this particular language of love and then translate it just in time for Miss Morgan's birthday a few weeks ago.


Morgan loves coconut.  I despise coconut.  All she requested from me for her birthday was a coconut cake.  She even related stories dating back to her childhood about always having coconut cake and how much she loved it.  Whether this was just a ploy to see me cringe, I'm not entirely sure, but either way, what my friends want, my friends get.

So, this cake.  What a process this was.  I had to find the perfect recipe, so after many days of searching (and surprisingly yielding far fewer options than I had originally anticipated), I decided on Bobby Flay's Throwdown coconut cake.  Now, if you know me, you know how much I not only love Bobby Flay, but love this show.  #4 on my list, to be exact (and now this is on my wish list too.)  But, being an Iron Chef and all, his recipes are always super labor-intensive, but always get outstanding reviews.  So this was the perfect excuse to challenge myself not only with an ingredient I loathe, but with a super complicated recipe. I was even more excited to read My Year on the Grill's review of this exact recipe, who confirmed some of my reservations about the cake. Special thanks to him for those tips!


First comes the many, many, fillings that you have to make.  I started with the coconut custard that is the base for the coconut buttercream and the coconut cream.  The custard has to sit in the fridge for two hours to cool, so this was the first thing that I started making. When it's all said and done, it should look something like this:

Next, I made the coconut simple syrup.  This is used to drizzle over the cakes once they're cooled in order to keep them moist and also to add coconut flavor to them, since you may have noticed that the cake does not contain any coconut ingredient (which is why I rave about the cake so much, so take my excitement with a grain of salt here, friends.) 


This is when I started making the cake itself, once the custard is in the fridge and the simple syrup is basking away all of that coconut on the stove.  Now, prepare yourselves: I have a very strong statement to make.  I LOVED THIS CAKE.  I loved everything about it.  It was super moist, full of flavor, and baked perfectly.  Ah, just look at that...

But, the recipe for the cake itself was really interesting - not like anything I've ever seen or done before.  I loved making the batter - even though I don't yet own this certain handy and heavenly piece of equipment - and even though I had to individually mash each tablespoon of butter into the dry ingredients.  It was fun.  The butter looks cute all cut up in individual pieces.  

But nonetheless, the batter still turned out wonderfully.  I wish that I had been able to find actual vanilla beans to use in the batter, but instead I just added more vanilla.  I can only imagine how much better this will taste with the bean.  I'm definitely using this cake recipe from now on for any vanilla/yellow cake that I need - it totally knocks Paula's (way too dry and dense) and Betty's (also way too dense) out of the park.  I knew Bobby wouldn't let me down.

Next up: toast that coconut.  This is when things started to not go as smoothly as they were for so long.  I'll leave it to your photographic judging skills to deduce what happened here.

Yeah.  The recipe says to leave it in the oven after you toast it, for 15 minutes to get it "crunchy."  I did that, and around the 9 minute mark, started to smell that all-too-familiar smoky smell that my lovely oven is so fond of permeating.  The good news?  The recipe waaaaay over-calls for the amount of toasted coconut you need.  All I used was the stuff in the middle that was still semi-white and it was totally enough.  Although you should probably ask Morgan - she actually enjoys the stuff.


Back to the fillings.  Once your custard has sat for two hours, you divide it between making the buttercream and the filling.  The filling was tricky.  It seemed to yield way too much, and although despite my preconceived notions, I used most of it to fill the cake.  I'm not sure this was the right call.

Oh, it looks pretty now, you say, but just wait until you scroll down further.  The buttercream also had its own hiccups.  It just wasn't coconut-y enough!  I threw in some more Malibu to try to make it a rum buttercream, but I'm not sure this even really worked.  The ratio of powdered sugar was totally off, too.  But alas, it somehow came together to form this:

I told you.  Coconut filling oozing all over the coconut place.  Oh well.  I'll leave you with a prettier picture, though, don't worry.

Morgan's Coconut Cake

Courtesy of Bobby Flay with adaptations from My Year on the Grill

This recipe is all about time management. I organized this recipe by how I organized my time, starting with the coconut custard since it has to sit for so long.  While you're doing that, soften your butter for the cake.  After the custard is in the fridge, prepare your cake. Once that is in the oven, prepare the simple syrup and put 3/4 cup of the heavy cream in the freezer to get really cold for the coconut filling. When your cake is done baking, toast your coconut. While the cakes cool, prepare the filling and frosting.

Coconut Custard:

3/4 cup whole milk

3/4 cup unsweetened coconut milk

1/2 vanilla bean, seeds scraped

4 large egg yolks

1/3 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

3 teaspoons coconut rum (recommended: Malibu)

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Combine the milks and vanilla bean and seeds in a medium nonreactive saucepan and bring to a simmer over low heat.
2. Whisk together the yolks, sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl. Slowly whisk the warm milk into the egg mixture then return the mixture to the pot over medium heat and bring to a boil, whisking constantly, until thickened.
3. Scrape the mixture into a bowl and whisk in the rum and vanilla extract.
4. Let cool to room temperature then cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours.

Cake:
2 tablespoons softened butter, for pans
2 1/4 cups cake flour, plus more for pans
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped [I couldn’t find any, so I just added another tsp of extract]
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces, slightly cold

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter and flour 2 round cake pans and line bottoms with parchment paper.
3. Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
4. Whisk together milk, egg whites, vanilla bean seeds and vanilla extract in a separate medium bowl.
5. With mixer running on low speed, add butter, one piece at a time, and continue beating until mixture resembles moist crumbs.
6. Add all but 1/2 of the milk mixture to the crumbs and beat at medium speed until mixture is pale and fluffy, about 1.5 minutes.
7. With mixer on low speed, add remaining 1/2 cup of milk mixture and increase speed to medium and beat for 30 more seconds.
8. Scrape sides of bowl and mix for 20 more seconds.
9. Divide batter evenly between two cake pans and smooth tops using a rubber spatula.
10. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with a few crumbs attached, about 22-24 minutes.
11. Cool cakes in pans on a baking rack for 10 minutes.
12. Run a small knife around the side of the pan and invert cakes onto baking rack, removing parchment paper.
13. Let cool completely, about 45 minutes.

Coconut simple syrup:
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1. Bring water and sugar to a boil.
2. Stir in coconut and remove from heat. Let mixture sit for at least 30 minutes, up to 4 hours.
3. Strain liquid into clean saucepan and bring to boil.
4. Let cook until mixture is slightly reduced, about 5 minutes.
5. Let cool.

Toasted Coconut:

2 cups sweetened flaked coconut [This amount will vary on how much you actually want covering your cake, I only used about 1/2 cup.]

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Spread coconut evenly onto baking sheet and toast until lightly golden brown, flipping once, for about 8-10 minutes.
3. Turn oven off and let the coconut sit in the oven until very dry and crunchy, about 8-10 minutes longer, depending on your oven.

Coconut Buttercream Frosting:

3 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream

3/4 cup coconut custard, cold

1 teaspoon coconut rum

Pinch fine sea salt

1. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes
2. Add cream, coconut custard, rum, and salt.  Beat until combined and smooth.

Coconut Filling:

3/4 cup coconut custard, cold

3/4 cup very cold heavy cream

Mix and keep cool until ready to assemble.

Assembly:

1. If you want a four-layer cake, slice each cake horizontally into 2 layers.
2. Place first layer on a cardboard round, cut side up, and brush with some of the coconut simple syrup.
3. Poke a dozen holes into the top of this cake and spoon a bit of the syrup into the cake.
4. Spoon 1/3 of the coconut filling onto the cake and using a small offset metal spatula, spread it into an even layer, leaving a 1/2-inch border around the edge of the cake.
5. Repeat with 2 more layers if making a 4-layer cake.
6. Brush cut side of reserved cake layer with remaining syrup.
7. Place final layer on top of the cake.
8. Frost sides and top of cake with buttercream.
9. Pat coconut onto the sides of cake and sprinkle remaining coconut on top of the cake.