Mint chocolate bars

Haha, sugar free. April Fool's! I was just a few months late. Right.

Anyway, back to real life. Where all things are good in moderation. These bars are adapted from the creme de menthe bars sold at Gabriel's. They are really something else. When I had one from the restaurant, I immediately determined to make something as close as possible at home, and was pleased to realize it was nothing more than a rich brownie base, a sort of fluffy (but thin) mint filling, and a thin layer of icing. Before I tried reproducing them, I googled for a recipe, just in case, and was rewarded with a preview page of Johnnie Gabriel's cookbook on Google Books that let me see the original recipe. So that simplified things!

I used a slightly different brownie recipe (the justly famous Nick's supernatural brownies) and halved all the components, since a 8" square pan makes more than enough for a family of 2 1/2 (we are not feeding the baby such unwholesome things yet), plus some to share.

Mint chocolate bars
adapted from Johnnie Gabriel's Cooking in the South
Makes 16 squares

Brownie base:
8 Tbsp (1 stick) unsalted butter
4 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Filling:
5 Tbsp. butter, softened
2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 Tbsp. whipped cream (go ahead and whip up a few tablespoons while you're at it, and save the rest for hot chocolate or whatever)
3/4 tsp. peppermint extract (or you can use 2 Tbsp. creme de menthe liqueur if you're fancy enough to have that around)

1-2 drops green food coloring (optional)

Chocolate icing:
3 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped (or use chips)
2 Tbsp. butter

For the base:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8" square baking pan with parchment paper and grease the paper.

In a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan filled with 1" of barely simmering water, melt the chocolate with the butter, stirring frequently, until smooth. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the eggs, sugars, vanilla, and salt. Stir in the melted chocolate mixture, then fold in the flour just til combined.

Scrape batter into prepared pan, smoothing the top, and bake 25-30 minutes, just until a toothpick inserted comes out with a few moist crumbs attached. Do not overbake! (In my opinion it is always better to underbake brownies a tad than risk drying them out.)

Cool on a wire rack to room temperature.

For the filling: While brownies are cooling, beat the softened butter and confectioners' sugar til fluffy. Fold in the whipped cream and peppermint extract (and food coloring if desired), then spread over cooled brownie base. Refrigerate for at least 1 1/2 hours.

For the icing:
Melt butter and chocolate together (in microwave or in double boiler as described for brownies), then pour over the top of the chilled brownies, smoothing as you go. Chill at least a couple hours, til topping is firm, then cut and serve.

Tasty healthy cookies (no really) and a daring resolution

Nikki's healthy cookies at 101 Cookbooks 
I *sort of* made these cookies once before---I didn't feel like making almond meal, so I subbed whole wheat pastry flour. That's no minor substitution, plus I'm pretty sure I underbaked them. Still, they were promising, so I've been meaning to get back to this recipe and make it as directed. I almost did that today: I omitted the chocolate chunks, to kick off my "heck, if I can go dairy-free and survive, and I can and probably SHOULD go sugar-free" resolution. I threw in 2 Tbsp of cocoa powder instead and was pleased to find that these cookies are delicious, answer a chocolate craving quite well, and remain completely sugar-free.

About that! I'm putting it out there for "accountability," which is more of a psychological trick than a serious plea for my two or three readers to check up on me to see if I've held fast to my resolution. There is little doubt in my mind that whether or not sugar is in fact inherently addictive (and studies with lab rats have suggested so), I am a veteran addict. Seeing as I would prefer to live my life free from any addiction, however innocuous the substance, it's time to tackle this. I thought giving up dairy for the sake of a baby with cow's milk protein intolerance would be hard. It was, for about a week, and for moments here and there. But largely the anticipation was much worse than the reality. As with dairy-free diets, there is no shortage of recipes and ideas for alternatives. Dessert is obviously not necessary to life and health---well, unless you are a sugar addict and we are talking mental health, in which case I strongly suspect the endless craving for more sugar contributes to irritability, among other things, because it is really annoying to have a little voice in your head constantly suggesting that you sneak another cookie/piece of candy/whatever you should only have small amounts of. I'm no chemist or food scientist, so I don't know if there is something fundamentally different about (let's say, refined white) sugar as opposed to the sugars found in fruits and other foods, but I think it would be a great starting point for me to learn to make fruit-sweetened desserts/baked goods (the latter will probably be more of a challenge, as I know my baking experiments with honey haven't gone so well). Fruit seems like nature's way of pleasing a sweet tooth with some actual nutritive content, rather than empty (and non-filling) calories. Once I run out of my nearly-empty bag of sugar, I simply won't buy anymore, which will make it very hard indeed to cheat on this.

Back to the cookies. These are *fantastic* a few minutes out of the oven, when they retain some crispness; after storage for a few hours they become quite soft, but if you've baked them long enough (basically as long as you can without them browning on the bottom), they won't be unpalatably mushy. Enjoy.

Laura's take on Nikki's healthy cookies
3 ripe bananas, mashed well
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
3/4 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. olive oil (not extra-virgin)
2 c. old-fashioned oats
2/3 c. almond meal (make your own in a processor with the same amount of whole raw almonds, processed to a sandy texture: this doesn't have to be super precise)
1/3 c. unsweetened coconut flakes/shreds
1/2 tsp. kosher or sea salt
1 tsp. baking powder

1) Preheat oven to 350 with racks in the upper and lower third positions. Line two half-sheet pans with parchment paper.

2) In a large bowl, combine the mashed bananas, cocoa powder, vanilla, and oil. In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients, then mix in with the wet until you have a loose dough. Drop scant tablespoonfuls onto your prepared baking sheets. Bake, rotating and swapping midway through, about 15 minutes. Let cool on baking sheets and store in an airtight container.

Smitten Kitchen cookbook review (in progress)

Time for a cookbook update. (Any update to revive this dead blog!) I've made only a handful of recipes from the new(ish) Smitten Kitchen book, but all four of the main/meat dishes I've tried have been outstanding:

- the sweet and sour brisket. So Deb talked this one up a LOT (I loved her description of the defensive tactics her mother-in-law employed whenever she tried to pin down the exact recipe, which remains a secret). I think that made impressionable old me just a tad disappointed when I made it and it wasn't out-of-this-world good, but it was a very tasty chunk of meat that I didn't mind nibbling on for days. Also it was EASY (a feature she also talked up a lot, and rightly so). Compared with Cook's Illustrated's brisket, which you sear before roasting (besides a lot of other finicky things I probably forget), this one you just plop in the pan. I did change the oven time, since I thought 350 sounded too high. I took it about four hours in a 300 degree oven and that was perfect.

- tomato-glazed meatloaves. The first time I made these I cried "typo!," as it took more like 35 minutes for them to cook through. I think the second time I upped the oven temp to 400 and it was still a little more than 20 minutes til they were cooked through---not sure what happened there. Anyway, they're still fairly quick and easy and delicious.

- sesame spiced turkey meatballs with chickpea salad. This is a great, great dish. It tops the list of things I can't figure out why I never made before. A bonus is that it's totally make-ahead-friendly (make salad and mix/shape meatballs in advance, so you just have 20-25 mindless minutes to cook come dinnertime). I have neither Aleppo pepper nor sumac in my spice drawer so I make do with things like ground white pepper and smoked paprika (no idea how close they are to what I'm subbing them in for, but they work well with the other flavors). Everything else I follow to a T and get excellent results. One thing: she says that you need an ovenproof pan "with a lid," but I'm not sure why that is specified as there is no lid used in the directions. You bake them in the 400 degree oven uncovered, in the pan (preferably cast iron!) in which they were fried. And they will be so, so good, and you will have two items to wash after dinner (skillet, turner/spatula---oh and a meat thermometer for three items). It doesn't get much better than that.

- wild rice gratin with kale, caramelized onions, and baby swiss. This I made dairy-free but protein-rich by adding a bottom layer of about 2 cups cooked shredded chicken and a little chicken broth, then proceeding as normal without the cheese. What a great use of kale: it isn't in the forefront, in case any diners are kale-ambivalent, but there's enough that it counts as a vegetable serving, and tastes like it belongs. I can't wait to make this version with cheese someday, as nature/Deb intended.

I'm pretty bummed by the baking section and its complete dependence upon butter, but hey, I can't blame Deb. If I had a choice I would still be burning through a pound of butter a week, I am sure. (As an aside, Earth Balance vegan buttery spread is not nearly as objectionable as expected: I held out for so long, thinking surely I could get by without something salty and fatty to spread on my bread, haughtily committed to the idea that there is no substitute for butter, so why are those crazy vegans even trying? I couldn't cope with the deprivation so I caved and met with a pleasant surprise. Vegetable oil spread. Yum. ...) OH, and the plum poppyseed muffins. Now I'm sad, remembering how good those were (browned butter and sour cream---how could they not be?). I even made a note about it being the best base recipe for muffins that I've  tried, and I've tried quite a lot. Including another SK recipe for coconut muffins (with coconut oil) that was...bad. But we'll not end this happy post on a sour note. I'm loving this cookbook and can't wait to try the leek fritters, to name just one thing I have marked.

Cherry-chocolate Bundt cake

I made a chocolate cake today that was a fantastic hybrid of Bundt cake recipes from two sources: Bon Appetit (Sept. 2009) and Cook's Illustrated's The Best Light Recipe. For a couple of years now, with widely varying results, I have been trying to make the latter recipe work. After the most recent attempt, I resigned myself to the fact that significantly underbaking the cake was the only way to make it worth the trouble, maybe. Otherwise there's no getting around the dryness and surprisingly anemic chocolate flavor.

I don't remember the last time I tried baking something "new" (okay, semi-new) and got exactly what I was hoping for. It is a good feeling for an amateurish home baker to have, especially while enjoying a slice of her success, still slightly warm from the oven.

Cherry-chocolate Bundt cake
Yields one standard-sized Bundt cake, serving about 16

1 3/4 cups (8 3/4 oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 cup boiling water
3/4 cup (2 1/4 oz.) natural cocoa powder (you can use Dutch-processed if desired, but it's not necessary)
2 cups (14 oz.) packed light or dark brown sugar
3/4 cup vegetable/canola oil
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup chopped semisweet chocolate, or chocolate chips (most are not dairy-free; I use Trader Joe's Pound Plus baking bars, which are)
1/2 cup sour Morello cherries in light syrup, drained and chopped coarsely (watch for and remove any pits, of course)

Directions
1. Preheat your oven to 350 with a rack in the middle. Grease a 12-cup Bundt pan with Baker's Joy, or grease and flour.

2. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Set aside. In a 2-cup glass measuring cup, whisk the cocoa powder into the boiling water. Let cool about 5 minutes.

3. In a large mixer bowl, beat the sugar, oil, and vanilla until well combined. Add the eggs and beat another 30 seconds or so, scraping down the side of the bowl, til combined. Add half of the flour mixture, beat til combined, and then add all the cocoa/water mixture. Mix in the remaining flour, then fold in the chopped chocolate and cherries.

4. Scrape batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, turning the pan once halfway through, until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out with a few wet crumbs attached. Remove from the oven and let sit 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve with cherries, whipped cream, powdered sugar, or nothing at all.

Sweet potato-pecan pancakes

I've been challenged in cooking and baking lately, as it seems I'll be dwelling in the land of the dairy-free for the foreseeable future. Surveying the landscape I am fairly optimistic about my prospects for eating well and not going crazy with longing for whipped cream. As long as I don't think too much about cream. Or cheese. But really, life isn't so bad: any Asian food is a guaranteed option, milk substitutes aren't bad for baking, and I love all things coconut, so coconut oil-based brownies are fine by me. Also: Trader Joe's Belgian chocolate bars = no milk solids = completely allowed. Oh. Yeah. I'll be okay.

This pancake recipe is adapted from one I cut out from the paper some time ago. I was unimpressed the first time---way too much nutmeg and way not enough sugar. But there was potential, so I kept tweaking it, this last time needing to replace the original butter and milk. It turns out canola oil and your choice of milk substitute (I favor almondmilk) work fine, and especially correcting the spice imbalances makes this a very tasty pancake indeed.

This makes a thick batter. Just add more milk if you prefer them thinner--in my experience this makes them less prone to burning or being underdone. You kind of have to spread the batter out in the pan with the lesser amount of milk, but I like the results better.

Sweet potato pancakes
Yield: about 8 3" pancakes, serving 4

3/4 c. whole wheat pastry flour, or white whole wheat flour
3/4 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
1 c. mashed cooked sweet potatoes
3 Tbsp. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 to 1 1/2 c. almond or soy milk (see note)
2 Tbsp. vegetable/canola oil

Chopped toasted pecans, to taste
Maple syrup


1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, salt, baking powder, and spices. Set aside.
2. In a blender or a large food processor, puree the potatoes til smooth. Add the eggs and brown sugar and blend/process til combined. Gradually mix in the milk (being careful, if you have a food processor, not to exceed the liquid fill line), then the oil.
3. Fold the blended mixture into the flour mixture, then spoon out 1/3-cupfuls onto a hot griddle or nonstick skillet. Cook and serve hot with pecans and syrup.