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.

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.

Eggplant marinara; upside-down apple cake

Hello blog. Life has changed a lot around here thanks to a little thing called a baby, and as expected I haven't been doing much cooking, let alone baking, in the past couple of months. But I'm very happy to be back playing in the kitchen, even if circumstances keep me from attemping anything remotely time-consuming, for fear I would start it and not be able to finish it until, oh, 3 a.m. I must say that mise en place has gone from being a helpful principle to proving absolutely necessary: if I prep a bit here and there throughout the day, by dinnertime all I have waiting is an assembly job with maybe a little cooking. Which means if all hell breaks loose around dinnertime, as it tends to do, my husband can handle the final steps with just a bit of instruction called out over the baby's wails. :)

Well, fall has fallen, as they say (...or not), and when I bought seven pounds of apples at the farmers market the other day I was hoping to whip up a fantastic autumnal apple dessert with some of my loot. After a (shorter than usual) cookbook scavenger hunt, I settled on the upside-down apple cake out of Cooking for Two 2011, that endless fount of inspiration and joy for the leftover-averse (not that we are). It was even better than I hoped. The cake was tender and outrageously buttery, and the apples hit the perfect balance between raw and mushy, thanks to the somewhat odd instructions to briefly saute two different-sized groups of apple slices before baking the whole thing. My only caveat is to put something underneath your pan, because the batter overflowed a bit toward the end of baking and made a mess on my freshly cleaned oven. (as in, cleaned the day of baking. But nothing a little Barkeeper's Friend couldn't fix.)

Upside-down apple cake
adapted from America's Test Kitchen: Cooking for Two 2011
Serves 2 with a huge appetite, or 3 more likely.
Tip: get the 6" cake pan at Michael's or Joann's with one of those ubiquitous 40% (or 50%) off coupons. Then it's like $2 and you don't feel at all guilty for purchasing something with limited use. Though this recipe alone is worth getting the pan.

2 Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples, peeled
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/3 c. packed brown sugar, plus 2 Tbsp separated
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz) all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 and have a rack on the next-to-lowest level. In case of spillage, put a foil-lined pan on the lowest rack. Spray a 6" cake pan with Baker's Joy, or grease and flour.

2. For the apples: slice in half pole to pole and remove cores. Cut one apple into 1/2" slices, set aside. Cut the other into 1/4" slices. Melt the butter in a 10" skillet over med-high heat. Pour off about 2 Tbsp into a small bowl or ramekin for use in the cake and set aside. Add the 1/2" apple slices to the skillet and cook just til they begin to caramelize, about 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the 1/4" apple slices and the 1/3 cup brown sugar and cook, stirring constantly, til the sugar dissolves and all the apples are coated, about 1 minute. Scrape into the cake pan and set aside.

3. For the cake: Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. In a medium bowl whisk together the granulated sugar, the remaining 2 Tbsp. brown sugar, and the egg until homogenous, about 30 seconds. Slowly whisk in the reserved melted butter until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla, then gently whisk/fold in the flour mixture, ensuring that no streaks remain.

4. Scrape the batter on top of the apples in the cake pan and smooth the top. Bake until cake is golden brown and toothpick comes out clean, 35-40 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then run a paring knife around the edges and invert onto a wire rack. Cool completely or til just warm, about an hour, and then serve with spiced creme Chantilly: whip about 2 Tbsp of heavy cream to soft peaks, then sprinkle in about 2 tsp. confectioners sugar, a dash of cinnamon, and a drop of vanilla extract. Perfection.

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Now that dessert's out of the way, onto the eggplant marinara(s). The (s) is because these are sort of individual ones meant to be appetizers, but I served two each as a main course and loved them. M is not crazy about eggplant (I'm not either except when it's fried and topped with tons of cheese and tomato sauce), but he said he'd eat it again. The recipe is at Epicurious. I used panko instead of fresh bread crumbs, which worked fine, and Newman's Own cabernet marinara is quite good. Hilariously, one reviewer noted that he thought the ricotta was "unnecessary." Personally I would never trust a person who called any cheese in any context "unnecessary," but judge for yourselves after you make it whether this would be the same with one less cheese. It's really good.

P.S. One more thing. My mom introduced me a while back to roasted okra. Oh. My. I should do a post on this, except it isn't more than olive oil, salt, pepper, and trimmed okra, roasted for 15 mins at 400 or 425 if more browning is desired. Then taste and see that, unbelievably, okra does not have to be fried in order to be divine. Lucky for me it's $2/lb at an awesome stand at the farmers market. I bought the purple variety and it turned dark green when cooked, like magic.

Bagels.

It's been a while since I talked about bagels. Since they are one of the staples of my baking routine even throughout the summer---which is a sure sign that they are something we must have on hand at any cost---I'm surprised at how little, or at least how unsystematically, I have discussed them here on my little corner of cyberspace. (Hah, flashback to 1999...)

Yesterday, per M's request, I gave the egg bagel concept another shot, and I baked them this morning. He had to leave before they were done, but I had the luxury of breakfasting on a fresh one. I used 3 whole eggs this time, cutting back the water to 6 oz (from 9) because irrationally I couldn't believe eggs really counted as that much liquid, but it was indeed too much. I had to add 3-4 Tbsp of extra flour to get the dough to the usual stiffness, and as I was shaping them I thought they weren't overly tacky, but the dough felt too soft. Last time, when I used all yolks, this yielded fragile bagels that were majorly lacking in chewiness. Nevertheless this time, though you can see below that the color is definitely not the bright yellow that some shops' egg bagels have, they maintained a proper chewiness and did not threaten to fall apart as I sliced them. They taste great. My next modification will be to add a couple of yolks to the 3 eggs and start out adding less water.

Note the impressive uniformity. Ha, ha.

Usually I double the basic bagel recipe (fully copied out here) in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Everyday. This differs from his previous version in that it does not require a sponge, but only a pre-mixed (and pre-formed) dough that spends the night in the fridge and comes out in the morning for a baking soda bath. Sounds like a fun little slumber party or something. Except then they get baked in a very hot oven and eaten in short order. Actually I have to prep and package them all for storage in the freezer---by far the only aspect of bagel-making that approaches tedium. Okay, sometimes it is downright tedious. But homemade bagels are not under any circumstances to be left out for more than six hours (in a tightly closed paper bag). I defiantly tested that rule once, and I'm just glad I still have all my teeth intact. For future use, it's best to slice each bagel as soon as it's cooled, wrap each half in plastic wrap or foil, and place the halves together in a large plastic freezer bag. I can't tell any difference between a bagel that's been out of the oven for half an hour or one that has been in the freezer (packed carefully) for two weeks, and toasted to order. So this is a pretty satisfactory system.

A note about doubling this recipe: it's a non-negotiable for me because the boiling and baking operation is something I'd rather do less often if I have the chance, and my fridge pretty easily fits the two large baking sheets needed for the double batch. However, I have a powerhouse of a Kitchenaid mixer (thanks Mom and Dad!) and even it struggled when I tried combining the two batches of stiff dough. I found the best and least inconvenient way to double the recipe is to mix each batch separately. Prep the water, yeast, etc. while the first batch is being mixed. Then while that dough is resting to hydrate the flour, mix the second batch. And it works out pretty well so that when the first batch is ready for its second mixing, the second batch is resting.  Then when they're both mixed and ready for the rise, I briefly knead them together to form one ball. That's not strictly necessary; you could just let them rise in two separate bowls. But that would be one more bowl to clean, which does not tempt me.

More random notes:

• I use the barley malt syrup. Yes it is $6.50 a jar at Whole Foods (that's expensive for me, to be clear), but it lasts a while and is worth the subtle complexity it provides. I am not a supertaster or anything like it, so if I can notice the difference, you will too. For the poaching liquid I do usually omit the malt syrup because I don't notice a huge increase in flavor by adding it there. 
• I use table salt and Pillsbury or Gold Medal bread flour---nothing special. 
• After trying both, my preferred shaping method is to poke a hole in the dough ball and then stretch it. (He notes that the other method, creating a rope which you join together at the ends, is the one preferred by professional bagel makers. Like this crazy guy.) 
• As far as toppings, the egg white wash as they come out of the bath is not optional: you will still lose a few seeds here and there as they get sliced later, but nowhere near the amount that come off if you skip the egg white. I do half poppy seeds (M's preference), half sesame seeds (my preference). I've tried the cinnamon raisin bagels and they were fine but the raisins tend to fall out in significant numbers when you are shaping, and I found that annoying. 
• I get obsessive about measuring out each dough ball to equal somewhere between 3 3/4 and 4 1/4 oz, but I let it go if one or two weigh in at 4 3/8 oz. For those mornings when we wake up ravenous. Right. These make a very reasonably sized bagel. None of this monster-sized nonsense where you're eating a cup of flour for breakfast.

So that's my little bagel review. They're really worth a try. As someone who is absolutely "below average," let's say, when it comes to shaping any kind of dough, yes it takes a little practice to get the bagels to look halfway decent. And I'm still not consistent with that yet (see photos above). But less than perfect shaping is not going to destroy your bagels. Follow the directions, and they will come out well.
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More rye news: I just found this deli rye bread recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum, helpfully streamlined at Smitten Kitchen, that uses whole grain rye flour (she doesn't specify in the recipe, but I skimmed through the comments and found that she used whole grain Arrowhead Mills like I have). So my plan is now to try this recipe before attempting to tweak the previously used CI one.

I must here repeat my plea that some tech geek out there invent a comment system for use on cooking blogs  that automatically categorizes and highlights comments from people who have actually made the recipe in question, so that one can more easily skim past all the "oh that looks deliiiish gurl" remarks. It could be color-coded for questions, useless flattering remarks (sorry, but especially on "celebrity" food blogs, why do people think the famous blogger, who has to weed through all these comments, needs their anonymous affirmation?), and helpful feedback/review-type comments that some of us really want to find sometimes. Sorry, I'm cranky and I think it's time for morning snack #1. (Just about 3 1/2 months to go, and then I will have to return to a normal person diet---it's nothing short of mysterious that I have not ballooned grotesquely. I guess the baby really is helping absorb the effects of all this snacking.)

all about rye

I still haven't gotten around to trying that rye bread again--which I just realized I never properly "reviewed" here. The verdict was that this was a fine first attempt with great flavor, but as expected (given my substitution of whole grain rye for the medium rye the recipe called for), it was noticeably more dense than usual deli rye breads. I was thinking next time I would try adding vital wheat gluten in hopes of giving it a little lift. But somehow "next time" has not rolled around yet. Laziness.

I did, however, make a great muffin recipe from the previously maligned Whole Grain Baking. As I said in the rye bread post, I marked about five more recipes that will determine whether I give up on this book or, at the very least, copy down the few recipes I found worthwhile and then pass it along to someone who might better appreciate it. It is a huge book and I hate to have it taking up precious shelf space if there are only a couple things I like or want to make from it. But I successfully adapted this recipe, originally ham and Swiss rye muffins, to help use up some of the massive amounts of kielbasa left over from Easter. (My in-laws brought down about 800 lbs of the good stuff with them from a butcher up north.) I so rarely think to make savory muffins, it's terrible; but with this one in my repertoire I think I'll remember the option more readily. Plus whole grains are healthy and all that, which is more than I could say for my (literally) sugar-coated, cakey blueberry muffin recipe, that's for sure...

Sausage and Cheese Rye Muffins
Adapted from King Arthur Flour's Whole Grain Baking, p. 47
Yield: 1 dozen

Note about the yield: I thought my muffin pan was standard, but with this as with some other recipes I've tried, it seemed like all the batter couldn't possibly fit into those dozen cups without spilling over. So I ended up getting another dozen mini muffins out of this. My "regular" sized muffins only took about 20 minutes to bake through, though the original recipe specifies 25-27 minutes. All that to say, your mileage may vary.

2 cups (7 1/2 oz.) whole grain rye flour
3/4 cup (3 1/8 oz.) bread flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 1/4 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese, divided
1 large egg
1 1/2 c. buttermilk
8 Tbsp. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
4 oz. finely diced smoked sausage, such as kielbasa

1. Preheat oven to 375. Grease a muffin tin with Baker's Joy, or use paper liners and spray them a bit just to make sure there's no sticking. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the 1 cup cheese and toss to mix.

2. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg, butter, and buttermilk, then add to the flour mixture, stirring just til evenly moistened. Fold in the diced sausage.

3. Scoop the batter into the prepared pan(s) (see note about yield above) and sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of cheese over the tops. Bake muffins until a toothpick inserted into the center of one comes out clean, 20-25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan 5-10 minutes, then remove onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Serve warm, or once cooled, refrigerate or (better yet) freeze the muffins. (I think these qualify as perishable because of the sausage.) They will keep wonderfully in the freezer for a couple of months.

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... as a P.S., since this is a very rye-themed post: last month I also made the rye seed crackers from Artisan Breads Every Day (pp. 133-36). I found them startlingly easy and surprisingly delicious. I'm not that much of a cracker person and I loathe rolling out dough of any sort, so I'm not even sure what made me try these, but I am certainly glad I did. They were so quick to make, and the dough was a dream to work with, which I did not expect at all. Highly recommend with cheese and fruit for a picnic-esque meal--- which is in fact how I used them, on our anniversary picnic. Given the "venue," this year's menu was considerably less fussy than last year's, and besides said crackers and cheese included shrimp cocktail (solely because I was craving it and Whole Foods had some fine specimens on sale), an ambrosia-style fruit salad, and a spinach salad with this (very anchovy-ish) green goddess dressing.

Yeasted waffles

These delicious waffles can and indeed must be made the night before the breakfast/brunch at which you wish to serve them. The original recipe served four but I don't like leftover waffles, and honestly it's enough of a hassle getting up and down for each new batch when it's just two people eating them; I've heard you can hold waffles in a 200 degree oven for a half hour or so without disastrous results, and I guess that would be your only option if you wanted to double these for a (relative) crowd. Yeasted waffles have a rich, delicate flavor that begs for little more than a sprinkle of cinnamon and a generous amount of maple syrup.

Yeasted waffles 
Serves 2
3/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp whole or lowfat milk
4 Tbsp unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (2 1/2 oz) white whole wheat or traditional whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. granulated sugar 
1/2 teaspoon table salt
3/4 teaspoon instant yeast 
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

Heat milk and butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until butter is melted. Cool mixture until warm to touch. Meanwhile, whisk flours, sugar, salt, and yeast in large bowl to combine. Lightly whisk the egg and vanilla together in another small bowl. Once the milk/butter mixture has cooled, whisk into the flour mixture until batter is smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and whisk til incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate immediately, at least 12 and up to 24 hours. When ready to serve, whisk the batter to recombine (batter will deflate) before baking in your waffle iron. Serve hot.

I am such a good wife.*

*Or, Rye bread, at long last.

Since marriage I have tried to make the vast majority of our breads and baked goods at home. It's one part the love of baking, one part the superior quality one (usually) gets when making breads fresh, and one part utter sticker shock when I calculate the mark-up on any bread that is bought at the store (let alone at the artisan bakery of your choice).  In my baking "career" I have more or less successfully made white and whole wheat sandwich bread, bagels, ciabatta, rustic Italian bread, baguettes, challah, babka, yeast rolls, biscuits, flatbreads, quick breads, etc, etc. And it only took me four years to get around to making my husband's very favorite kind of bread. Yes. I am such a good wife.

M has suffered through bad outcomes of whole wheat bread experiments for as long as we've known each other. The current (mostly) whole wheat sandwich bread I make, tweaked from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday, is plenty acceptable to both of us for toast and sandwich purposes, and finally we enjoy a  bread that isn't bitter and/or dense as a brick; but it's still not something we'd jump at if we didn't know it was healthier, and therefore a better everyday choice, than white bread.

On a couple of occasions when M was uncomplainingly eating this or less successful bread experiments of mine, he mentioned casually but directly that rye was his favorite kind of bread. Hint, hint. I would nod, and make a mental note to look into that, but forget. Rye flour is expensive (comparatively) and hard to find (comparatively), and frankly since it's not my favorite kind of bread, and I'm the baker here, it has been shoved to the back burner time after time. (So now you know for sure I was being facetious about the good wife bit.)

Over Christmas vacation, making our usual rounds to all the NJ diners he grew up with, M would order rye toast with nearly every breakfast. I started to follow suit and realized, hey, this stuff wasn't bad. When we got back home I determined it was time to find and perfect a rye bread recipe so that my husband wouldn't have to keep hinting and waiting for another however many years. Now, a mere three months later, I have found a rye bread recipe (Baking Illustrated's Jewish deli rye bread), I have made it once with minimal modification (halved to make one "small" loaf for the first trial, and used whole grain rather than light or medium rye), and the verdict? I think it's pretty darn good. But I'm still waiting for the real judge to get home and try a slice.

Jewish deli rye bread. (By the way, does this look like a "small loaf" to you? It's not. That's what the recipe authors call it, but it is not. Fine by me.)

This same day (albeit before the bread had come out of the oven for tasting!) I ordered Baking Illustrated with an Amazon gift card from Christmas (appreciate my restraint--holding onto even part of an Amazon gift card for three months is possibly a record for me). I checked it out from the library a couple weeks ago and have made the snickerdoodles (good), peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (goooood), and now the rye bread (with modification noted above), and given those results plus a strong desire to make probably 95% of the rest of the recipes immediately, I figure I can get my money's worth out of this cookbook in no time. Besides, my only other true baking cookbook, King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking, was such a flop, I am sorry to say. (Maybe I will report more on that some time. I recently went through and marked about 5 more recipes to try, as sort of an ultimatum--- if they aren't worthwhile, out goes the book. I need the shelf space.) There are always cooking (and baking) blogs for finding new recipes, but they are never as thoroughly tested (or "guaranteed," if you will) as Cook's Illustrated's are, and the hour is quickly coming when I will have much less time and energy to devote to this or any other hobby. This is because we have a baby on the way, and I hear they are sort of demanding, particularly in the beginning... Check back in a year and this blog (if it's been updated at all) will be all about troubleshooting homemade baby food, and/or maternal diet fare for those postpartum months. Don't say I didn't warn you.

So... off to make some fried pickles for dinner. (Seriously. These. Will report back.)

The Perfect Scoop: a review

It's been about a year now since I spent some birthday money on a Cuisinart ice cream maker and pastry chef  David Lebovitz's ice cream (and fixings) cookbook The Perfect Scoop. I have not made such a rewarding frivolous purchase since. Though I am still far from having tried even half the recipes in the book, I thought I'd give a run-down of all the things I've made so far. In fact I'm shocked at how little I've actually made. Looking through the book today for something new to make tomorrow, I decided on the toasted almond and cherry ice cream, to which I'll probably add some form of chocolate. I can't imagine how that could possibly let us down, but I'll report back with the details. :) (I also paused for a second at the avocado ice cream recipe, having just finished a delicious salad with a generous amount of perfectly ripe avocado---best vegetable ever---but I just don't think I could be that adventurous.)


Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream
This stuff is well worth the use of your most extravagant vanilla beans (actually it just uses one!). I often invert the milk-cream ratio (not at all sure what the all-cream option would yield, but I can't bring myself to do it) to be 2 cups milk to 1 cup cream, and it is still decadent, smooth, and creamy. As he suggests, the fudge ripple (see below) layered in as soon as the ice cream is frozen is magical.


Coffee frozen yogurt
M liked this more than I did. The tanginess of the yogurt with the coffee was not my favorite combination.


Vanilla frozen yogurt
Amazing if you use a good yogurt: Dannon is too one-dimensional and flat to me. I like Stonyfield Farms a lot, and they aren't super expensive like some organic brands can be. Brown Cow is also divine but I don't see it around much unless I go to Whole Foods. After the first couple of tries, I cut the sugar to 3/4 cup (from 1) and liked that better, though it does freeze hard.


Cheesecake ice cream
I made this for a friend with the blueberry sauce on p. 182 swirled in, and it was all I could do not to keep it for myself. I really don't like cheesecake that much, strangely, but this was delicious.


Roasted banana ice cream
The first time I made this, the smell of the bananas roasting with the brown sugar and butter set my expectations really high, and I was a little disappointed with the end result---didn't taste as deep and complex as the aromatic byproduct. But M loved it, so I made it again, using mostly half-and-half for the whole milk, and it became a favorite. It's truly remarkable with the fudge sauce (see below) and whipped cream, or you can add some rum before freezing for another take. I use a shortcut for in the summer when turning on the oven is a terrible idea: just sauté the bananas in the butter and sugar over med-low heat until you get the same effect. Faster and cooler.


Lemon ice cream
This was alright: simple and plain. It froze very hard.


Strawberry frozen yogurt
Good, but I prefer vanilla yogurt with a strawberry swirl. 


Cranberry orange sorbet
A pretty tasty way to use up cranberries leftover from the Thanksgiving sales. Simple and quick. Oddly it ends up tasting less like cranberries and more like strawberries to me.


Chocolate tangerine sorbet
This was one of two recipes in this book that just didn't do it for me. I made it in early December and still have some in the freezer. It tastes okay when the mood strikes. I like chocolate and orange; otherwise I wouldn't have made it, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Just odd flavors.


Chocolate sorbet

What words could adequately describe this unassumingly named phenomenon? "Divine, "mind-blowing," etc. cannot come close. I've only made this once (somehow!?), and I believe I used my stand-by, Trader Joe's 72% dark chocolate (it comes in the big $5 Pound Plus bars and if they ever discontinue it I will die, really just die on the spot). It's so easy, and so worth getting the blender out for that perfect texture. Like many sorbets it freezes pretty hard. And it can be hard to wait those 5-10 minutes for it to thaw a bit on the counter.

Blackberry-lime sorbet

My second favorite sorbet from this book so far. It is really tart, so if you don't love sour flavors, you will want to find a way to decrease the amount of lime juice, or just make the plain blackberry sorbet on the same page. But I love it for chasing spicy Mexican food, and it looks pretty, too. 

Classic hot fudge

This is the real deal, and incomparably better than nasty storebought squeeze bottles. I usually halve the recipe even though it keeps for two glorious weeks in the fridge.

Lean chocolate sauce

I personally wouldn't make this again. I think I even made it before the fudge sauce, so it's not that it just didn't measure up to the impossibly good full-fat version; it just sort of fell flat on its own.

Peppermint patties

These were alright. Sad, because I had high expectations of making something possibly better even than York patties (scarcely conceivable), but I would want to try again with peppermint oil, which I understand is more subtle and interesting than peppermint extract (what I have). They were fun to make and pretty easy, at least. I certainly had no problem polishing them off, let's not get the wrong idea. 

Fudge ripple

Absolutely delicious, and so fast and easy. A must with the vanilla ice cream.

Chocolate ice cream sandwich cookies

These had really terrific chocolate flavor, but I have two problems with the recipe: one, these are enormous cookies on their own, but then to think that they are made for sandwiching with ice cream in between---way too much cookie, and I swear I am not afraid of calories. I would make them half the size next time, and there will be a next time soon. Two---and not really the fault of the recipe at all---it's just so hard to tell when really dark cookies are done. I baked mine until they were crispy, so watch that and err on the side of underbaking if you're after fudgy cookies.

Lemon-poppy seed cookie cups

Hate to end on a sour note, if you will, but this was the other of two recipes that simply did not work for me. It was the first thing I tried out of the book so I don't remember exactly what happened, except that they were completely impossible to handle with my thinnest spatula---they just fell apart. I made sure I didn't leave out some flour or almonds or something, but that wasn't the problem. Not sure what was.

I may just keep adding/updating this one post, so I have something of a permanent review page for what has been my favorite dessert cookbook over the past year. 

Babka saga finale

Don't ask why I dragged this out into three installments, when it was an easy one-afternoon project. As I've observed with other eastern European delicacies, the dough itself is only slightly sweet (it's hard to taste any sweetness in it at all with a sugar-loaded American palate like mine). But contrasted with the chocolate it's wonderful. Peter doesn't give very specific instructions for baking for each way that you can shape the bread (loaf, coffee-cake style in a tube pan, or braided like this), so FWIW, my kranz-style loaf took 40 minutes (rotated once halfway through) to reach the desired 185 degree internal temp. Some of the edges burned just slightly, but nothing too bad. I am so glad I finally made this bread. Half of it did indeed go to the neighbors, so we'll see what the verdict is on authenticity/overall deliciousness from an objective third party. :) Next up (after moving!): Polish poppyseed roll. I still have to decide on a recipe for that one...

Babka saga part II

While the first rise was finishing I made the filling:

Herr Reinhart says to grind the chocolate in a food processor, or if you don't have one, chop it as small as possible. This was my best effort. (The lighter stuff is the cinnamon). We'll see how it works.

This is the chocolate I used. The price is right, and the flavor is oh so wrong. In the right way.

This is the filling once the butter has been added to the chopped chocolate and cinnamon. Do you know how much restraint it took me not to eat this as is?

And this is the soft pillowy dough rolled out to the size of a small car, ready to be rolled up jellyroll style and rocked gently to about 18" in length. Since my loaf pans are packed away I opted to make my bread kranz-cake (Israeli) style, which means braided. I think it's prettier this way too, even though my braid is a little too loose, so I'm hoping the chocolate doesn't start falling out of the bread and melting everywhere when it bakes.

I am now waiting on the second rise to finish, at which point I will bake the bread...

Just kidding!

Today, some nine days before moving, against the common sense which would dictate focusing my energies on things like packing, or even just sitting down and thinking through logistics, I was overcome with the need to make, at long last, Peter Reinhart's chocolate cinnamon babka. Why I have waited so long, having owned this magnificent book for two years, I cannot tell. If it comes out well it might make a proper goodbye gift to our Polish neighbors who have been the best neighbors anyone could ask for; if it comes out poorly, well, it will be preparation for when I move into a house with a gas oven. *mournful sigh* I seriously am not sure what effect that will have on my baking mojo (what mojo I have), because all I hear is that electric ovens are so much more reliable, so much better for bread baking (because the heat is less dry, which makes for better crusts), etc., etc. I have never had gas appliances of any kind and frankly gas scares me. I think of it as "the silent killer." No offense to heart disease which I think is what rightfully claims that title. I will probably have five carbon monoxide detectors in our 2000 sq ft house. I exaggerate, but the uncertainty of how things will go with this new oven makes me want to especially cherish this my last (for real---I am packing away the mixer this weekend!) baking project in the apartment.

And as a special last-baking-project-ever-for-now feature, I am going to take pictures at each step of the way like any self-respecting food blogger normally does.

Cream the butter and the sugar just til mixed.

Mixing in action. (I never promised the photos would be any good.)

Once the four egg yolks are added the dough becomes a lovely golden yellow.

And that is where we find ourselves: I kneaded the dough (what a dream to knead--soft as a pillow) for a couple of minutes after adding the flour, milk, and yeast to the butter-egg yolk mixture, and now I await the end of the first 2 1/2 hour rise. As an aside, the recipe calls for 2 Tablespoons of yeast, which is a huge amount for one (albeit large) loaf. I was a little worried about it being a typo and having the dough explode while it sits out for two hours at room temp, so we'll see. 

I am almost sick of pumpkin.

I truly never thought I would say those words, but after a five-day period in which I made pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones, pumpkin oatmeal cookies, pumpkin ice cream, and pumpkin granola bars, I'm almost there. The tried-and-true pumpkin bread was as good as I hoped, though I made them into muffins and they did this weird collapsing thing that I think happens when I add batter from the bottom of the mixing bowl that didn't get mixed in so well with the leavener. The cookies were initially promising: when I tried the first batch, which I baked til almost crisp, I thought they were quite good. But they softened considerably over the course of the next day and I was no longer crazy about them, to say the least. The softness just made them taste too fatty and the pumpkin flavor was anemic. Maybe I should have baked them longer. The pumpkin ice cream I adapted from David Lebovitz. And I did adapt (used 1/2 c. evaporated milk instead of the whole milk, and half-and-half for the rest; didn't have brown sugar and subbed about 2 Tbsp molasses to the custard mixture), so don't let my review necessarily dissuade you from making the recipe; however, if you do not like pumpkin pie, you will not like this ice cream. You might say "duh," but I was surprised at how much it resembles the polarizing pie, from the texture to the spice mixture. I love pumpkin pie but think this iced incarnation is just a little too odd for me to want to make again. Then there were the pumpkin granola bars: in short, a failure. I took note of her warning about the bars being soggy if underbaked, so I took them well into "golden-brown" territory, but to no avail. Still soggy, weird flavor, and then I spent some time crumbling them onto a cookie sheet and trying to salvage the mess by making granola. That didn't work either. The cranberries were burning before the moisture from the pumpkin evaporated, and I have to work up the nerve to throw it all out because I really don't like it. Anyway, to end this pumpkin saga on a happy note, the scones were most delicious, though the dough was a bit more difficult to work with than other plain scone recipes I've tried. I managed, and though my scones look quite a bit smaller and more "rustic" than hers, they're the perfect mid-day snack with coffee. I could eat the spiced glaze with a spoon. Not that I did. Oh no, I have restraint.

So I have a strange kitchen science-related problem/question for those inclined. This was so weird to me. I made a big batch of chicken stock last week. For once none of my recipes for the week called for even a little bit of stock, so I packed it all up into freezer bags and put it in the freezer. In case of spills, I put a large ceramic plate on the bottom of the freezer, then lay two quart-size bags of stock on top of it. (The rest of the bags were laid in various places around the freezer with a distinct lack of similar care, but that is not relevant to our problem.) The next day, I was shocked when I opened the freezer to stack the frozen bags of broth and remove the plate, because after picking up the first of the two bags on top of the plate, I went to grab the one underneath it and found it completely unfrozen! Cold, but not even a chunk of ice in it. If someone could explain to me the mechanics/chemistry by which a ceramic plate going into the freezer with two bags of broth stacked on top will keep the bag on the bottom from freezing at all, I would be very impressed. Obviously there was little air circulation around the bag sandwiched between the plate and the other bag; but it is beyond my unscientific self how this could prevent it from freezing at all, after 24 hours. So. I will award a food-related prize to the person with the most plausible answer. Not really. Well, maybe. Depends how busy I am with this moving thing, and how far away you live...

miscellanies

Well, lacking reliable access to a home computer lately has challenged my rigorous goal of writing something, every now and then, about what I've been doing in the kitchen. I've forgotten how to write with paragraphs and such, so I resort to bullet points.

* Most recently, I tackled pierogis again (Best International Recipe). Armed with relaxing (and appropriately Polish) Chopin in the background and a few deep breaths, I managed to push through frustrating dough problems without losing my cool. I still couldn't get the dough wet enough to make a smooth ball, even after adding more water than was called for---and I use a scale to measure flour to 1/8 of an ounce. I don't have a food processor as the recipe called for, but I don't think that should have materially varied from mixing with a pastry blender and my hands. It was far from "soft and malleable." The final yield was about half what it should have been, and the rolled-out dough a bit thicker than I would have liked it, but not anywhere near as bad as the first time. I also made sure and tasted the filling, seasoning it a bit more than I thought necessary, so blandness wasn't an issue there. I am still on a search for a lighter, easier-to-work-with dough recipe than CI provides (perhaps the problem is with me), and until then, I'll continue to cheat with wonton wrappers. Your babcia would disapprove, but boy, do those work in a pinch.

* I tried a new cookie recipe this weekend courtesy of David Lebovitz: gingersnaps (which are not snappy but soft) that happen to be fat-free. I thought they were not bad. Since I'm not a fan of candied ginger I simply left that out; the spice mixture was spot-on, and they didn't taste like they were dying for butter to help the flavor. The recipe is here.

* I decided it was time to try another chocolate cake recipe (someone has to test all the variations out there, for quality control), so I made CI's sour cream-fudge layer cake into cupcakes. They were quite tasty, but I'm spoiled by their "ultimate" recipe with the ganache in the center and the super light and fluffy texture. I think I would enjoy this recipe more as a layer cake, and I will definitely be making it again.

* I've had an old used bookstore copy of Marcella Hazan's Essentials for over a year now, and tonight I made my third recipe from it. Third. Pathetic. Anyway, it was good, if simple and restrained, and nowhere near as rich as the tomato-butter-onion sauce. It used up some pancetta I had and was quick and easy.

* Tomorrow is going to be Indian adventure day: I'm trying tandoori chicken (a CI recipe I've heard people rave about), with rice pilaf and a mango chutney, somewhat against my better judgment. I've never been tempted by descriptions of chutney. Oddly I remember my sister and I coming across the word "chutney" when we were younger and finding it hilarious for some reason.

* Never mind that it's going to get back into the 80s this weekend: I have my heart set on some kind of applesauce/spice cake. A recipe in Joy of Cooking looked intriguing when I was leafing through that the other night. This cookbook has its fair share of entertainment value as well, particularly in the variety meats section. E.g., a recipe for those who like to indulge in homemade head cheese. They subtitle it, "a well-liked old-fashioned dish." Simply: "Quarter a calf head. Clean teeth with a stiff brush, remove ears, brains, eyes, snout, and most of the fat. Soak the quarters about 6 hours in cold water to extract the blood. wash them. Cover with cold water." Etc. I cannot bring myself to type more. It is a dramatic thing to say, but I would almost certainly rather starve than bring myself to cook a calf's head, after brushing its teeth.

baking anticipation

While I'm at it, here's my list of desserts/baked goods that I will be making as soon as cool weather sets in:
1. Makowiec, per this Fresh Loaf recipe. It calls for the whipping of egg whites (my most dreaded baking-related task) but it seems it's just to lighten the filling, so I won't sweat it if (yet again) I fail to achieve stiff peaks. My husband has fond memories of his Hungarian grandmother making this bread for holidays. I've had bakery versions and am anxious to see if I can make a decent one at home.

2. Chocolate-dipped almond biscotti (recipe below). Besides the extensive oven time, they feel like such a fall/winter snack to me. These were one of the first successful things I ever baked. The recipe comes from a much-referenced copy of Gourmet's Casual Entertaining, Random House: New York, 2001. (Unlike many Gourmet recipes it is not on Epicurious so far as I can tell.)
1 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp. grated orange zest
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 whole egg + 1 egg white
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. whole almonds, toasted then coarsely chopped
6 oz. bitter- or semi-sweet chocolate, for dipping

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees and adjust a rack to the middle level. In a medium bowl combine the flour, sugar, orange zest, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, beat together the egg, egg white, and vanilla to combine. Add the flour mixture and beat just til combined. Stir in chopped almonds.
2. Use floured hands to form the dough into a 12x2" log and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake until pale golden, about 45 mins. (Do not turn off oven at this point.) Cool the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the log, peeling off the parchment carefully if it sticks, to a cutting board. Use a sharp serrated knife to cut diagonally into 1/2" thick slices. Place slices back on the baking sheet and return to the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then turn slices and bake another 10 minutes, until crisp. Transfer biscotti to a rack to cool.
3. Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a double boiler, then dip the top (curved) edge of each cookie in the melted chocolate. Transfer them to a sheet of wax paper set on a large plate or baking sheet, then chill in fridge til chocolate is set, about 5 mins.
Yield: 18 cookies. If you don't dip them, you can keep them at room temperature for about a week. Once dipped, they can be held in the fridge for up to a day.

3. Gingerbread. I haven't yet found a perfectly moist, perfectly spiced cake, but I'm sure it's out there. This chocolate-chip variation is certainly a winner in its own right. I've been making it for several years. David Lebovitz's fresh ginger cake is also supposed to be fantastic.

4. Pumpkin "bread" (it's cake, let's be honest). Also a great Williams-Sonoma recipe I found years ago. I like making it into muffins, or just using a regular loaf pan (not their $30 specialty one) and watching the oven time accordingly. Pairing it with rich vanilla bean ice cream (this year I can make my own!) makes for an insanely good fall dessert.

5. Butter Rum Cake (from Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor). I only make the cake and half the amount of glaze, never the rum custard sauce (as tempting as that sounds), and it's still a beautiful dessert with the most amazing texture. It's not greasy like pound cakes can be.

6. Dark chocolate & cherry bread pudding. This is a Pam Anderson recipe I actually have scribbled on a napkin stuffed into my recipe binder, though I'm sure it's online somewhere. I think I was waiting at the doctor's office and reading one of those women's magazines when I found this recipe and, knowing Pam's reputation, thought I should find some way to copy it. That was a while ago and I still haven't made it, but it is a priority this year.

7. Maple-Walnut Pear Cake. Another untried recipe, from David Lebovitz (Ready for Dessert). The flavors sound pretty amazing, so no explanation needed. It's also a smaller cake (one 9" pan), which is how I adjust most recipes for us, so that's a plus.

8. Sea salt caramels, recipe here: lacking true fleur de sel I used 3/4 tsp. coarse ground sea salt, and it worked. You just don't make caramels in the summer. After November they feel right.

9. Big apple pancake. We had this for Sunday "breakfast" (what we do for lunch after church) all the time last winter. It requires the same amount of oven time as a pan of bacon, so you put both in the oven and you have an easy, delicious breakfast 15 minutes later. It doesn't always puff up uniformly, so don't count on it being perfectly picturesque.

10. Biscuits. Cream, buttermilk, herbed, drop--it doesn't matter. To me nothing says a hearty winter meal like a fresh pan of biscuits, and I miss them.

"Focaccia? She's not here right now."

Today I came across this old (1987) NYT article in which the author recounts responses she got, like the one in this post's title, when phoning restaurants across the city in search of focaccia, which had just started to "make a dent" at the time. Funny to see her accurate prophecy about an increase in popularity. It reminded me I haven't yet made a single focaccia all summer, which should change this weekend.

This was bagel day, though, and thanks to a new baking sheet (actually old, just new to this purpose) that all but burned the bottoms of one batch meant to be given away, tomorrow will probably also be bagel day. Oh well. One of my experiments for this round was determining how many pans of bagel dough I can fit into my refrigerator on a normal day. Not really, but I did find that with some finagling I can do three batches at a time instead of just two.

The pan at the top is filled with egg bagels, which M had requested a while ago and I finally researched and made. Brown Eyed Baker, which is quickly moving to the top of my least obnoxious food blogs list*, has several posts on bagels, and the author actually had private correspondence with Peter Reinhart (I am starstruck) to find out what changes to make to his basic recipe in order to get egg bagels. Unlike BEB I used the Artisan Breads Everyday recipe I always do, but followed the same instructions for adding egg yolks and decreasing water. I had half of one while I was slicing and packaging the whole lot, mostly because I discovered too late that these were much softer and more fragile than regular bagels and so tore the first one apart while slicing. It didn't rock my world, but we'll see what the egg bagel connoisseur here thinks. That was really the only experiment; the other two batches are the same kind I've been making.


In other news, I think I found my heirloom tomato supplier for the rest of the summer at the Suwanee Farmers Market yesterday. I've never seen so many varieties of beautiful tomatoes. I only brought home a couple different kinds: the yellow brandywine I had in a salad was very nice, and I think Cherokee chocolate is the kind I found last summer and loved, so I also have a pound of those for tonight's dinner. Fresh tomatoes may just be worth suffering through a GA summer for. And that may be the most awkward sentence I have ever crafted.

* About food blogs and why I find them obnoxious: it's mostly because I can't simply handle them in their ubiquity and variety. Being as ADD as I am, if I read food blogs whenever I wanted I would a) never use the cookbooks I own, b) never use the cookbooks I check out from the library, c) never use the food I already bought for my "meal plan" (loosely so-called) that I meticulously map out with all sorts of frugal intentions at the beginning of the week, etc., etc. In short they are distracting and counterproductive for me because of my weakness. And I find that obnoxious. :)

Honey-yogurt waffles, and a tangent on "healthy baking"

Recipe below. First, some (unnecessarily in-depth) background. Once upon a time I went through a phase my family probably remembers all too well, during which my supreme goal in baking was to drastically alter original recipes, the first time I made them, in order to make them "healthier." This included but was not limited to a) substituting whole wheat flour for regular "processed" flour as often as possible (i.e., as often as a recipe called for flour); b) using applesauce as a 1:1 replacement for butter in baked goods; c) adding ground flaxseed to e-v-e-r-y-thing, which consequently meant decreasing any fat in the recipe, since there is fat in ground flaxseed; and d) arbitrarily decreasing amounts of butter, sugar, or whatever other ingredients I deemed unhealthy. I may be forgetting some of my "techniques." It took a series of many more failures than successes for me to finally realize that baking is an exacting science. It is not forgiving of a novice's whims, certainly not when said novice is ignorant of basic points of culinary chemistry.

Now, of the aforementioned adjustments, some of them I do still use, in moderation. (The applesauce-for-butter one I do not, and I only have whole flaxseed on hand for a cracker recipe I've been meaning to try.) Moderation also happens to be the key to receiving a cake recipe just as it is, without one plea (forgive the irreverence), because three sticks of butter or not, it's dessert. You're not going to eat all three sticks of butter by yourself. Let dessert be dessert, for crying out loud. I did just today make a 50% whole wheat ciabatta that turned out fabulously---that is one area where I'm more than happy to use whole wheat flour, but I did it under the expert guidance of Peter Reinhart. (Love ya Pete.)

The reason I write all that on this particular post is because I recall making these honey-yogurt waffles (which I actually made into pancakes, cause heck, it didn't really matter to me what the original recipe said, even in the TITLE) at the height of my whole grains madness. No doubt because the title caught my eye as sounding healthy. I probably went ahead and used all whole wheat flour and omitted the butter and added flaxseed, who knows. Tonight, however, I returned to this recipe for the first time in years and made them exactly as the recipe indicated, in the wafflemaker. They were splendid. They did not taste healthy; they did not taste like a self-consciously "sugar-free" breakfast, and while it is unusual to see a handful of oats thrown in to a waffle recipe, it was clearly not done as some half-baked attempt to make the recipe "healthier," because you can always sense---well, taste---when that has happened. The flavor is subtly sweet and I think they're great waffles.

Honey-Yogurt Waffles
adapted from Williams-Sonoma.com, which cites it as adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Waffles from Morning to Midnight (did not realize that!)
Serves 2-3
These do get pretty dark because of the honey---at least mine did, though the picture on Williams-Sonoma looks very pale in comparison!

1 1/2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp. old-fashioned oats
1 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp. milk
6 Tbsp. plain yogurt (I used Stonyfield Farms whole milk)
2 1/2 Tbsp. honey
1 egg
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat your wafflemaker. Melt the butter and set aside.

Whisk together the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Whisk together the milk, yogurt, honey, egg, and vanilla in a small bowl til very well combined (it will take some time for the honey to incorporate). Pour liquid ingredients over the dry and lightly whisk until combined. Fold in the melted butter. Pour 1/3 cup-fuls (or however much your wafflemaker manual specifies) of batter into the wafflemaker and bake til deep golden. You can hold these in a 200 degree oven for up to half an hour if necessary. Serve with butter and maple syrup.