TWD (rewind): Dressy Chocolate Loaf Cake

Over the last few weeks - months, really - I've missed several TWD recipes that I was really looking forward to making. As I get the chance, I'm going to go back and bake a few of them. Starting with this loaf cake.

Chocolate cake rarely impresses me. I usually find it too dry, and lacking in chocolate flavor. Oh boy, did this cake prove all of that wrong! It was amazing in every way: flavor, texture, appearance - even the batter was beautiful; it looked like fluffy chocolate mousse. The cake's inherent deliciousness, is elevated to an even higher level by the elements of filling and frosting. Even with all of that, it manages to seem miraculously light. This cake is a keeper.

The cake itself is deeply chocolate-y, the crumb is moist and tight - very reminiscent of a pound cake. Superb. After baking in a loaf pan, the cake is cut horizontally into 3 layers. Each layer is filled with a tart fruit jam - I used black currant; a perfect complement in flavor and texture to the cake. The frosting is amazingly simple. It is made of nothing more than melted chocolate and sour cream. As it cools it hardens, forming a bittersweet ganache-like texture with a sour cream tang. Wow. I'll be using this frosting again. I'll be making the whole cake again for that matter!

I love that this cake has so many elements, yet is so simple. Perfect for any occasion. Thanks to Amy Ruth of Amy Ruth Bakes for making this wonderful selection. You can find the recipe on her blog.

TWD: Salted Butter Caramel Brownies

It has taken considerably longer to get back into some sort of baking/blogging routine than I had expected. My life will still be in a bit of upheaval for the next several months, so bear with me!

The brownies for this week's TWD were supposed to have peppermint patty chunks in them, but there isn't a truly organic version (and the ones that are close are insanely expensive). I was planning on using chopped mint chocolate, but the town that I am temporarily in is very small, and there was none to be had! So I decided on adding pools of salted butter caramel. In my opinion, you can never go wrong with salted butter caramel.

It was a bit of an experiment, and though they were quite tasty, they weren't terribly attractive... I think I will play around with the way the caramel is incorporated. If I had had more time to make them I would have dropped spoonfuls of the warm caramel onto parchment, frozen them, and pressed them into the brownie batter so that it wouldn't be visible in the final product. I may also try a sturdier brownie recipe. I liked that this one was thin and fudgey, but it was rather flimsy and prone to falling apart. I'll let you know if I try this one again...

The brownie was chocolatey, not too sweet and nice and fudgey. I was pleased that the pools of caramel stayed soft and pliable even after 30 minutes in the oven, and the rich and creamy flavor was a wonderful contrast to the deep chocolate.

I baked these brownies for a family lunch, and they were quite a hit. Taste-wise, there really aren't any changes necessary, my only problems were more aesthetic in nature.

The Brrr-ownies were chosen by Karen of Welcome to our Crazy Blessed Life. The recipe for them (including the peppermint patties) is on her blog.

Let me add an apology for the less-than-stellar photos... We can't win them all...

Salted Butter Caramel

(makes more than you'll need for these brownies)

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

3 tablespoons salted butter

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a saucepan over medium heat, cook sugar and salt, stirring frequently, until completely fluid. Add butter, stirring constantly - careful here, it will spit and boil furiously. Just keep stirring. Add cream and vanilla and stir until smooth. Pour immediately into heat-proof jar or bowl.

To finish the brownies like I made them, drop about a tablespoon of caramel into pan of brownie batter - portioning it so that there will be a pool in the center of each slice. (I cut mine into 9 pieces, so I had 9 pools). Bake as directed in brownie recipe.

Macaroon Truffle Tartlets

The longest I've ever lived in one place was the first four years of my life; spent in a house that my mom lived in as a small child, and where my cousin subsequently grew up. In the 26 years since then I have moved 21 times, and I'm about to turn that into 22. So, while I'm trying to update my blog as frequently as I can, it is difficult to do while packing up my house and moving myself and my little ones. For now, we're moving into an apartment in the lower level of my mom's house so that we can save money for the big move - number 23! - that will take place in a few months. We'll be going to Iowa so that my kids can grow up in the same amazing community I grew up in.

Once I'm settled in my mom's house I should be able to post with greater frequency, until then, these tartlets are so quick even I can squeeze them in!

These tartlets are as simple as they are delicious. What could be better than a chewy macaroon shell filled with rich bittersweet ganache? Perfection. Oh, and they're gluten-free!

Macaroon Truffle Tartlets

For the Macaroon Shell

2 large egg whites

2 1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch of salt

For the Ganache

4 oz bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup heavy cream

Butter the insides of 8 regular muffin cups and line the bottom with a parchment circle - don't skip the parchment, they will stick without it. Preheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, mix together all macaroon ingredients, stirring until evenly combined. Distribute evenly between muffin cups - about 2 tablespoons per cup - and press firmly into the bottom and sides of the cup. Bake for about 12-15 minutes, until insides look dry and outsides are golden brown. The insides will remain very light. Cool completely, then remove from pan.

Make the ganache

Place chopped chocolate in small bowl - I like to use a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup with spout for this. Heat cream, stirring occasionally until it is bubbling around the edges, but not boiling. Pour cream over chocolate, and let it sit for 1 minute. Stir chocolate into cream, starting in the center and moving out to the edges, until smooth. Don't over stir, or the ganache will separate. Divide ganache evenly among macaroon shells and refrigerate to set.

There are so many variations you could make with these: topped with whipped cream and/or berries;with a layer of jam, peanut butter or caramel under the ganache; caramelized or toasted nuts incorporated in the ganache; herb-infused ganache; crystalized ginger or citrus peel in or on top of the ganache, the list goes on!

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Not be be repetitive or anything, but I have another one for you from Good to the Grain. I can't help it, I love this book. This was actually the first recipe that I marked to make when I received the book - I mean, they're chocolate chip cookies! Plus, they are the first recipe in the book - but I went with slightly more unusual recipes when I started to bake from it. Then I found myself with a little unexpected time on my hands...

I have a 3 1/2 year old and a 1 1/2 year old, so needless to say, I've suffered my fair share of sleep deprivation. It isn't a terribly common occurrence, but every few weeks my younger son decides that sleep just isn't for him and around 2 in the morning he wants to get up and play for a couple of hours. Well, Friday night was one of those nights. After trying all of my tricks to get him back to sleep, I gave up and decided to bake. This recipe immediately came to mind - I had all of the ingredients and it was simple enough that I didn't think I'd be able to screw it up in my half-asleep state. Thankfully, I was right.

I'm a rather harsh critic when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, so I wasn't sure what to expect from these; they use 100% whole wheat flour, which is fairly unusual for most baked goods.

I served these at a class I gave at my store on Saturday afternoon on cloth diapering and baby wearing, and people were crazy for them. Everyone asked for the recipe, and one woman told me they were the best cookies she had ever eaten! They were a hit!

The first thing that surprised me about these cookies, was the fragrance of the dough; it smelled almost like it contained brown butter and had a stronger aroma than any dough I've ever made. They baked up beautifully, and I couldn't wait to take my first bite. Verdict? They are delicious.

The cookies are soft and chewy, generously studded with bittersweet chocolate chunks, and the whole wheat flour adds a sweet, earthy, nutty flavor that is amazingly complementary to the chocolate. I have to say, these chocolate chip cookies are second only to the ones I made a couple months ago that are a hybrid between the Cooks Illustrated and New York Times versions. That is high praise coming from me.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from Good to the Grain

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

8 ounces (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter cut into several pieces

1 cup palm sugar (or dark brown sugar)

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate cut into 1/4" - 1/2" pieces

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheet with parchment. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium sized bowl, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat sugars and butter on low speed until just blended, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until just combined after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Add dry ingredients, and mix on low speed until flour is barely combined. Stir in chocolate chunks. Form dough into balls about 1.5 ounces each, place on baking sheet 2 inches apart. Bake for 16-20 minutes, until the cookies have spread and cracked, the tops are dry and have browned a bit. Cool on baking sheet.

Spelt Olive Oil Cake with Chocolate Chunks

Ever since I got the book Good to the Grain - from which I baked these cookies last week - I haven't been able to get this cake out of my head. It is so unusual, so unpredictable, so humble, yet so sophisticated. It was curiosity that made me bake it the first time, but it is the sheer deliciousness of this cake that will keep me coming back to this recipe for years to come.

It doesn't look like much, but it has a little secret; the thing that sets this cake apart. What is it, you ask? Rosemary. Am I the last person on the planet to bake a dessert with rosemary? I was skeptical, I admit, but after eating this cake I can't believe I waited so long.

I was shocked and amazed at how seamlessly rosemary fit into this cake. Though I haven't baked with rosemary before, this wasn't my entry into herbal desserts. I made basil ice cream last summer and was less than thrilled about it. Because of that experience, I definitely had my doubts going into this cake, but I shouldn't have worried. It is spectacular.

This is a cake that can follow a fancy meal just as easily as it can be an afternoon snack. It has more dimension of flavor than almost anything I can remember eating. Though foods containing both olive oil and rosemary are, more often than not, savory, they make perfect sense in this cake. Really, this is the most surprising thing I've ever made. Each bite I take is new, and transportive and utterly delightful.

There isn't a lot of sugar in this cake, so the sweetness is subtle. It has the perfect quantity of bittersweet chocolate, whose richness and bitterness offset all of the other ingredients beautifully. I couldn't detect the taste of the spelt at all, but chocolate and rosemary are fairly strong flavors to compete with. The crumb of this cake is fluffy and soft and fine and moist, and it has a firm crust. It isn't the prettiest cake around - actually, it kept reminding me of another wonderful though entirely different cake - but I guarantee it can hold its own in the taste department against most anything else.

Oh, and if I haven't convinced you yet, it has minimal ingredients and is mixed up by hand in mere minutes. Make this cake. Make this cake, make this cake, make this cake.

Spelt Olive Oil Cake with Chocolate Chunks

adapted from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce

3/4 cup white spelt flour

1 1/2 cups white wheat flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

3 eggs

1 cup olive oil

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour a 9 inch spring form cake pan. In a large bowl, combine flours, sugar, baking powder and salt, set aside. In a medium sized bowl, whisk eggs thoroughly. Add olive oil, buttermilk and rosemary and whisk well to combine. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and whisk until just combined. Stir in chocolate. Pour batter into prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for about 40-55 minutes, or until evenly golden brown and tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool completely before slicing.

Cashew Chocolate Chip Crisps

I was lucky enough to receive Claudia Fleming's The Last Course for Christmas. It is an incredibly beautiful book that is only available now through the North Fork Table & Inn website. It is pricey, but worth it. I've spent hours perusing the inventive recipes and sumptuous photographs. Everything looks amazing, each recipe meticulous, unexpected, familiar, inviting. I want to make it all.

To christen my book, I started with these cookies. It is well-documented that I love chocolate chip cookies. These are one of the most interesting chocolate chip cookie recipes I've come across, and I just had to give them a try.

They're called crisps, and Claudia describes them as being brittle, but mine weren't... I made my cookies larger than she specifies - heaping tablespoon of dough instead of a heaping teaspoon - which probably accounts for the difference. The texture was fairly standard as far as chocolate chip cookies go, though thinner than I usually prefer. That being said, I loved these cookies. To me they are a cross between a Florentine and a chocolate chip cookie - this is how they are forgiven for being on the thin side; since they aren't a traditional ccc, they don't undergo the typical ccc scrutiny. Though they don't fall short on any other fronts.

These cookies are chewy, crispy on the outside, contain milk and bittersweet chocolate, they're studded with toasted cashews and are finished with orange zest. They are magnificent.

Cashew Chocolate Chip Crisps

adapted from The Last Course by Claudia Fleming

2 1/2 cups toasted cashews

2 1/2 cups white wheat flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 1/4 cups palm sugar

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

zest from 1 orange, finely grated

2 large eggs

1 3/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon water

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chunks

8 ounces milk chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 325. Line a baking sheet with parchment. In a food processor, grind 1/2 cup of toasted cashews and 1 tablespoon flour to a fine meal. In a medium sized bowl, combine remaining flour, salt and the ground cashew/flour mixture. Coarsely chop the rest of the nuts. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugars until creamy. Add vanilla and zest, beat until well combined. Add eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each addition. In a small bowl, dissolve baking soda in water and add it to bowl of the stand mixer. Beat until combined. Add flour mixture in two batches, mixing until just combined. Stir in chopped chocolate and cashews. Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto baking sheet. Bake for about 18 minutes, until golden brown all over. Cool on baking sheet.

Homemade Mounds

I wasn't allowed to eat candy growing up. I mean, there were the occasional indulgences on Easter and Halloween, but even then they were carefully rationed - or so my mom thought... I had quite the sweet tooth, and found ways to sneak treats as often as possible. I always discovered the hiding places of the Easter baskets and Halloween bags, helping myself to just enough that I knew wouldn't be missed. And then there was the bookstore.

The school that I grew up attending had (has) a university attached to it, and that university had a bookstore. A small place, carrying the essentials; toothbrushes, greeting cards, tees & hats with the school's logo, and candy. Tons of candy. Oodles of candy. My favorites were Laffy Taffy, Lemonheads and some other sour, chewy thing whose name escapes me. I liked the sour chewy things best of all. Though the university bookstore has since been overhauled and no longer carries such junk food - now it is all organic, corn syrup free, etc... back then they had it all, and I ate it all. I babysat a lot, so I had my own income, and I lived on school campus because my mom taught there. Every day, I would ride my bike home, speed to the bookstore before it closed for the day, stock up on candy and ride home. When we moved out of the place on campus, my mom found a candy wrapper graveyard behind the sofa. Oops.

Mounds weren't one of the things that I bought at the bookstore - remember, it was the sour, chewy things that were my candy of choice - but my mom enjoyed the occasional Mounds, especially when we went to the movie theatre. It was the legitimatly consumed candy of my childhood. As soon as I saw a recipe for homemade Mounds, I knew I had to make them. I'm sure it has been at least a decade since I ate a real Mounds, but I'm positive that these are considerably better than the real thing.

They have a soft and slightly gooey coconut center enrobed in a delicate layer of dark chocolate. Thankfully, this recipe doesn't make very many. Feel free to double or triple it it. I got 8 candies, each a little more than an inch in diameter.

I would recommend using a silicone candy mold for these. I didn't, and they look a little sloppy. The chocolate layer would be much more even with a mold. I don't have one - yet - and I couldn't wait to acquire one before making this recipe.

Mounds

adapted from Elana's Pantry

3/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut

1/4 cup coconut oil

2 tablespoons agave

3 1/2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted

Combine coconut, coconut oil and agave in small bowl. Form into desired shapes, lay shapes on parchment-lined baking sheet, and place in freezer for about 10 minutes to harden. Drop coconut shapes one at a time in bowl of melted chocolate, coating thoroughly. Remove with fork, and lay back on parchment for chocolate to set. You could temper the chocolate if you desire, but honestly, these won't last long enough for the chocolate to bloom. If using a mold, paint the inside of each well with a thin layer of chocolate, place in freezer to harden, press coconut mixture into chocolate-lined mold, paint top of coconut with chocolate, put back in freezer. Remove from freezer, pop candies out of molds and enjoy!

Chocolate Babka

It is so exciting to discover delicious new treats. Until recently, my only frame of reference for a babka was a vague recollection of a Seinfeld episode. I also kind of knew that they were something served on Easter. Then a while back I saw a photo of a chocolate babka on Tastespotting, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head ever since.

Since Easter is coming up, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give this decadent yeast treat a shot. Turns out, what I made is more of a Jewish babka and not the Easter type, but oh well... It is incredibly delicious, and there is no reason it couldn't still be part of your Easter spread!

For some reason, I had a feeling that I would be able to find a fantastic babka recipe on Smitten Kitchen. Maybe because Deb lives in NYC, I don't know. Regardless, I was right. Boy, was I right. I hit the babka jackpot. However, when reading through the recipe, I discovered that it made 3 loaves of this rich chocolate bread. I have no need for even one loaf, and only certain insanity would prompt me to bake three. Looking at the quantities, it is not a recipe that lends itself easily to scaling down, but I knew it was the one I wanted to try so I went ahead and did the math. A scale will be helpful for this recipe, but you can still make the babka if you don't have one. You'll just have to estimate the partial eggs.

So, what is so special about this bread? Where to start...

The actual bread element is soft, tender, creamy, sweet, not at all dry. Actually, I think it would make a better base for the St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake than the one in the recipe, as it is similar in texture but much less dry.

In almost equal proportion to the bread is chocolate. Dark, decadent, beautiful chocolate. This bread is most definitely not for the faint of heart. Even in the scaled recipe there is close to a pound of chocolate.

The less dominant flavor in the bread is cinnamon. I enjoy the combination of chocolate and cinnamon, but was unsure of the almost alarming quantity of cinnamon this recipe called for. I was afraid it would be overpowering. It was actually quite complimentary, though it is a distinguishable flavor.

To finish off this already over-the-top loaf is a streusel topping - which despite slightly resembling cauliflower, is delicious. I have never met a streusel I didn't like, and this was no exception. It is made with powdered sugar, which makes it quite crunchy when baked, and offers a wonderful counterpoint to the soft bread and rich creamy chocolate.

Before you make this babka, be warned; it has many elements and takes a good chunk of time. It is, however, completely worth it.

Make sure you read through this recipe thoroughly before starting out. As I mentioned, it was slightly strange to scale, so some of the quantities are odd. In addition, there are a lot of steps. This one requires a little more attention than your average recipe.

Chocolate Babka

adapted from Martha Stewart via Smitten Kitchen

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast

1/3 + 1/4 cup sugar

1 large egg divided (33.3 grams - 2/3 egg, 16.67 grams - 1/3 egg)

12 grams egg yolk

2 cups unbleached white flour*

1 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons unsalted butter

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon cream

*depending on the consistency of your dough, you may need more flour. I had to add almost an entire additional cup to mine.

Heat milk to 100-110 degrees. Pour into a small bowl, and add yeast. Let stand for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, in another small bowl, combine 1/4 cup of the sugar, 33.3 grams of egg (that's 2/3 of an egg) and the egg yolk. Add egg mixture to yeast mixture, and whisk to combine. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, stir together flour and salt. Add wet ingredients and mix on low until the flour is almost incorporated. Change to dough hook. Add 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon butter to mixer. Beat on medium until dough is smooth and soft, and slightly sticky. If your dough is too sticky, add more flour 1 tablespoon at a time until it is the right consistency. Butter a large bowl, form dough into a ball and roll around the bowl to coat it with butter. Cover bowl with plastic and set in a warm place until doubled in size, about and hour. Meanwhile, make the chocolate filling. Place remaining sugar and butter in a medium sized bowl, and using your fingers or a pastry cutter, combine them until well incorporated. Add chocolate and toss with your fingers until completely blended (though there will of course still be chocolate chunks of different sizes). Butter a 9" x 5" loaf pan. Beat remaining egg (remember, this is 1/3 of an egg) with cream. Turn dough out on a well-floured board. Roll to a square about 16" x 16". Brush edges with the egg-wash, and sprinkle all but 2 tablespoons of the chocolate over the dough, leaving a 1/4 inch border. Roll dough tightly into a log. Pinch seam closed, pinch ends together. Twist 5 or 6 times, and lay twisted log out straight on your board. Brush the left half of log with egg-wash, and sprinkle with remaining chocolate. Fold the right side over the left, making sure your chocolate stays in place. Fold ends under, and pinch closed. Twist your doubled log two times, and place in prepared pan. Brush the top of log with egg-wash, and sprinkle with streusel (recipe below). Cover loosely with plastic wrap, and let it sit in a warm place for 20-30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 350.

Bake until golden, about 55 minutes, then turn oven down to 325 and bake for about 15-20 minutes more, until the loaf is deep golden. Cool in pan on rack. Wait until babka is completely cool before cutting.

Struesel Topping

1/3 cup + 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

1/3 cup + 2 tablespoons unbleached white flour

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Combine all ingredients. Using your fingers, mix until completely incorporated. Crumble, so that there are chunks ranging greatly in size.

200th Post!!! Outrageous Bittersweet Chocolate Chunk Cookies

While I haven't been here as much as I've wanted to lately, I can hardly believe that this is my 200th post! I have always been the type of person that gets incredibly excited about things, does them for a short while, than loses interest. The fact that blogging has become more fulfilling over the last (almost) year is just amazing to me. The food blogging community is truly an incredible thing to be a part of.

These cookies are perhaps the most chocolatey thing I've ever eaten. I've eaten a whole lot of chocolate in my time, so that's really saying something. They are dense, have a brownie-like crust, and are so full of chocolate chunks that they melt in your mouth. In fact, as I was adding the chocolate to the batter, I had a hard time telling which element there was more of.

The batter is supremely easy to make (though is not quite as lightning quick as these lovelies) and could be made gluten free by replacing the flour with cocoa powder.

My mom is probably the toughest baked goods critic around, and she dubbed these the best chocolate cookies she had ever eaten. She said they were better than World Peace Cookies. Better than World Peace Cookies?! Now I don't know that I'm willing to go that far, but they are at least equally as good. They are unbelievable.

Outrageous Bittersweet Chocolate Chunk Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart

8 ounces roughly chopped bittersweet chocolate

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

2/3 cup unbleached white flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

heaping 1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chip-sized pieces

Preheat oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment, set aside. In a heat-proof bowl placed over a pot of simmering water, melt the 8 ounces of chocolate and butter, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the eggs and sugar on high until pale and thick, about 3 minutes. Turn mixer to low and add melted chocolate in a thin stream until combined. Add flour mixture and stir until just combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in chocolate chunks. Drop heaping tablespoons of batter on prepared cookie sheet, 2-3 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until cookies are dry and cracked but still soft in the center. Cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes, then transfer on parchment to cooling rack. Repeat with remaining batter. If you want your cookies to be the most attractive, spoon all of the batter out while it is still warm. As it cools it will harden, resulting in a slightly thicker cookie with a little less of a crust. These photos are all cookies made from warm batter.

Green & Black's Peanut Sticky Buns with Salted Butter Caramel Sauce

A couple of weeks ago, Tastespotting sent out a tweet on Twitter that said to contact them if interested in an opportunity that involved baking, blogging and chocolate. Those happen to be my three favorite things in the world aside from my kids.

I received a response a few days later asking for recipe ideas involving the new Green & Black's chocolate bar, Peanut. It is a milk chocolate bar containing caramelized peanuts and sea salt. I love Green & Black's chocolate. As many of you know, I eat exclusively organic food, including copious amounts of G & B chocolate. The ideas started coming. I sent a list of about 8 or more possible recipes to Sarah of Tastespotting and The Delicious Life, including these rolls. They picked four bloggers' submissions, and I was so lucky to be one of the four!

I had so much fun developing this recipe. I made it three times in five days, and unfortunately I ate almost all of them. True story: the day I was photographing the final batch, I looked down and saw that there were only five of twelve rolls left in the pan. I had eaten seven. SEVEN!!! They are just so damn tasty!!!

These are some of the most delicious, decadent things I have ever eaten. Really. They have everything: bread, crunch, chocolate, goo, caramel. Oh my. Oh. My.

The roll itself is not something I would call moist, but it is most certainly not dry. Soft. It is soft. It is ever so slightly sweet with a hint of vanilla. This is a roll that could stand on it's own - all too often I find that the bready part of a cinnamon roll/sticky bun is flavorless without all of its acoutrements. In this case, the roll is already so good, it is brought to a ridiculous level of deliciousness by its toppings and fillings. The Peanut bar is really quite something. I'm normally not a big fan of peanuts, but these are caramelized, so you get a wonderful sweet crunch every bite or so that is a lovely counterpart to the rest of the bun. The chocolate is rich and decadent but not overdone, and its sweetness is balanced by the barely sweet roll and the salty caramel sauce. Oh the caramel sauce. It is perfection. If I could eat it with a spoon I would. Oh, wait. I have been eating it with a spoon. It is smooth. So smooth. So creamy. The perfect balance of sweet and salty with a deep, dark caramel flavor.

Thank you so much to Sarah of Tastespotting for giving me the opportunity to create a fun and scrumptious recipe with a fantastic new chocolate bar. My recipe will be posted on the new Tastespotting blog. The blog launches next week, but there is no word yet on the order that the recipes created by myself and the other bloggers will be posted, so check back here for a link to the recipe.

*** UPDATE *** 3.23.10

The recipe is up!!! Here is the link. Enjoy!

The Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's about time, isn't it?! I can't believe I haven't posted in so long. And here I am with another chocolate chip cookie... I hope you're not tired of them. There have been many factors to my absence, not the least of which is the fact that I've baked several things that I wasn't really crazy about, and I have a hard time posting sub-par treats. These cookies, however are anything but sub-par.

These are the cookies that I surmised about in my last post. These are the Perfect Cookie and New York Times cookie hybrid. These are the cookies. The cookies.

They are drawn more from the NYT recipe than the CI one, the only real contribution from CI being the brown butter. What a contribution it is, though! I will never make another chocolate chip cookie without brown butter. It does add an extra step, but it is well worth it. I find it fascinating that the actual brown butter flavor doesn't really come through here. I tasted several to make sure. What it does is deepens the flavor of the cookie, tempers the sweetness and imparts a slight nuttiness. It is a smooth and subtle addition, one that highlights the tastes already present and seamlessly ties all of the elements together.

These fulfill all of my requirements for a perfect chocolate chip cookie: they are dense and chewy on the inside, with a crispy and sturdy outer shell; the flavor of the cookie itself is rich and complex and mysterious due to the brown butter; the balance of cookie to chocolate is right on and the sprinkle of salt on top is the perfect finish.

I have no criticisms of this cookie. None. They were given enthusiastic thumbs up by everyone who tasted them, were the winner of a blind taste test with this cookie, and my mom deemed them the best chocolate chip cookies she's ever had. That's the real ccc test, people. If my mom approves, it is a true winner.

The Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from The New York Times and Cook's Illustrated

8 1/2 ounces unbleached white flour

1/2 + 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

10 tablespoons (5 ounces) unsalted butter, browned

5 ounces light brown sugar

4 ounces granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chip-sized pieces

Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine sugars. Pour hot brown butter over sugars, and without stirring, place in refrigerator to cool the butter to room temperature. Attach bowl to mixer and on medium speed, beat until light in color and fluffy. If butter isn't becoming pale, it isn't cool enough. Pop it back in the fridge for a few more minutes and try again. When butter mixture is desired consistency, add egg and beat for 30 seconds. Stir in vanilla. Add dry ingredients, and mix until just incorporated. Stir in chocolate. Form dough into a log and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours (if you can stand to. If not, I understand). When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment. Form dough into balls a little over an inch in diameter, or 1.5 ounces. Place balls at least 2" apart on baking sheet, and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until slightly puffy, dry on top and tinged with golden. Let cool completely on baking sheet.