On Haitus

Hello lovelies!

The blog is on haitus until about January, as both of us are off exploring new and exciting places, several thousand miles from our home kitchen. There will potentially be updates, as I know we each have myriad recipes from this summer yet to be posted. Whoops!

Also, one can take the baker out of the kitchen, but one can never take the kitchen out of the baker. Or something like that. What I mean to say is, there is every possibility that we will be making tasty things in our exotic locales, and will update you all if/when we get the chance.

Sweetly Yours,

The Diabetic Duo

Updates Galore!

Hello dear readers!

We're busy updating the blog with all sorts of goodies that we've made, but just not had time to post! We'll backdate all our posts, so anything dated as July or August was actually just now added. Between the two of us, we have around fifteen posts to add. Are you appropriately terrified? We sure are.

Additionally the blog is undergoing some design changes. Be on the lookout for a new, chic design, courtesy of Chef G.

Sweetly yours,

The Diabetic Duo

Peanut Butter and Jelly for a Picnic!

When I was in third, fourth, and fifth grades, every day, for lunch, I would have a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. My parents would pack me one, in my lunch, every day, for over three years. So it goes to show that I love PB+J.

On a completely different note, some friends were putting together a picnic. Obviously, I opted to make dessert. (Chef A made pretzels!) I needed a fun, simple, summery dessert. Cookies seemed ideal and easy to transport, but I wanted something fun and original. I originally thought of jam thumbprints, which has a nice, fruity sound to them, but wanted something a little more... unusual. That's when I remembered PB+J. And then quickly set about finding a recipe.

I was halfway through figuring out how to combine a thumbprint sugar-cookie recipe and a peanut-butter-cookie recipe, when I found this. It was perfect. I threw it together, modified a little tiny bit, and went off to my picnic. I have a recipe for you:

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
vanilla
sugar for rolling

3/4 cup jam, jelly, or preserves
2 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

I didn't have any shortening on hand when I made the recipe, so I was substituting butter. It also didn't have enough peanut-butter flavor, so I tweaked the amounts a little bit to just give it a little bit more edge. Okay, cookies are nice and simple:

Preheat that oven to 375F. Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside. Cream together the sugars, butter, and peanut butter until smooth and fluffy, add the eggs, milk, and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mixture, mixing thoroughly after each addition, until you have a nice cookie batter.

Form into small balls (I usually go for about 3/4" diameter), roll in sugar, and drop onto an ungreased cookie sheet (actually, I used SilPats, but the recipe says ungreased is fine). This recipe makes a decent number of cookies. Be aware. You may want to cut this in half to avoid having to cart around a giant tray full of over 50 cookies. You have been warned.

Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes. While they're baking, I recommend the following step: toss the jelly/jam/preserves into a small saucepan and heat it up to thin it out, then dissolve the sugar in it. I personally think it adds just a nice contrast to the more savory peanut butter flavor of the cookies later on.

Take the cookies out of the oven when they're just starting to brown around the edges. They should be decently soft and chewy-looking, but solid enough to hold a shape. Give them a second to cool and then make a mad dash (with your thumb) through the line of cookie, indenting the centers. Warning: Hot! So hot! It's best to do this while the cookies are still hot and pliable, but be careful for your thumb!

Once both the cookies and the jam have cooled down a little, spoon a little bit of the jam into each cookie indent. These can be eaten warm or not, and are super-tasty no matter when you have them. I recommend with milk.

~Chef G

Cookie-dough Cheesecake

Dear everybody. I love cookie dough. I don't care about salmonella, I love cookie dough. That is all.

No seriously, it's one of those things that I simply can't live without -- eating cookie dough out of the bowl when you make cookies, eating batter out of the bowl when your make cakes or brownies -- there's something in it that's quintessential to the baking experience. It makes me think of this:

Anyway, I had the opportunity and the encouragement to make something delicious and unexpected for forty people, and this time, no one else was making cheesecake. I had known what I would be making for months. I don't normally like to make cheesecake because it takes too long (in my mind, I don't know why) and when I bake it's usually because I want to eat something now. But if it's for a special occasion and for others, it's a wonderful and delicious option. I'm weird, I know.

So I had decided months ago that I wanted to make cookie dough cheesecake, in honor of one of my favorite cheesecakes from a certain restaurant. (Because I love cookie dough and I love cheesecake and I can't think of any better way to combine two of my favorite things) The problem was, all of the recipes wanted me to use eggless cookie dough. Now, if you've ever tasted eggless cookie dough and regular, egg-y cookie dough side by side (sorry vegans, you're out), you'll know that the eggs make the flavor. So I was having none of that. Yes, there's all these warnings out there about salmonella in raw eggs, but you know what? I didn't care. I was making this thing with eggs and if the internal temperature of the cheesecake didn't get high enough (which it still might have, who knows?) then so be it, I was willing to take that chance.

As such, I used my own personal in-head recipe for cookies and found a basic cheesecake recipe to go along with it. Pulling from here, with tons of modifications.

Ingredients~

Cookie Dough:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tbsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
vanilla
1 cup (semisweet) chocolate chips

Cheescake:
1/4 cup melted butter

1 cup white sugar
16 oz cream cheese
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
vanilla

Topping:
1 cup sour cream
2 tsp white sugar
vanilla

Directions~

There are a few parts to this, so I'll try to break it down as much as possible. First, we're going to make the cookie dough. Preheat your oven to 375F. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda) together and set aside. In a different bowl, cream together the sugars and the butter (I always recommend a stand mixer for this kind of thing, but believe me, it can be done, and done well, by hand. Hand mixers are fine as well). When it's nice and light and fluffy, add the egg and the yolk, as well as the vanilla, and mix. Add the flour mixture a little at a time, stirring each time. You should end up with a nice, thick cookie dough. Add the chocolate chips and stir until they're evenly distributed.

Now we're going to do something interesting. Divide the cookie dough in half. Set one half aside. With the other half, drop rounded teaspoons onto a greased cookie sheet until you've used all the dough. Toss them in the oven for 10-14 minutes until they're nicely golden brown and done. I know some of you out there may enjoy your cookies soft (I know I do) but this is not the aim here. You want them to be crispy. When they're done, take them out to cool. At this point, I would recommend putting them in the freezer for a bit. It'll help if they're cold in a sec.

Take a break while the cookies chill.

You should have a good supply of cold, crispy (yummy) chocolate chip cookies. Now chop 'em up! Or rather, put them in a food processor (blender works too!) until they reduce to crumb size. That's right, we're making a crust for the cheesecake out of these cookies. Meanwhile, bring your oven temperature down to 350F. When you have about 1 1/2 cups of cookie dust, you can stop and save the rest of the cookies for eating and garnishing. Combine the cookie powder with the melted butter (we've moved on to the cheesecake part of the ingredients now) and form a crust on the bottom and lower 1/2 inch or so of the sides of a 9-inch springform pan. Put it in the oven for a few minutes, until it looks like it's willing to stay in place, probably anywhere between 5 and 10 minutes.
Note: Swelling and butter runoff may occur. Do not panic. If the bottom of the crust swells up, tamp it down with a fork once you've taken it out of the oven. If it looks like there is a river of molten butter ready to be released at any given moment, it is perfectly acceptable to unclasp the springform a little bit (and briefly) to let it drain off. If done properly, your crust should stay in place until you clasp the springform back into shape.

Okay. Now that we have a crust, we just need some cheesecake. Combine the sugar and cream chese. Hopefully, you can use the mixer you used for the cookie dough. (If you don't have a mixer, don't despair: this, too, can be done by hand. What a labor of love.) When it reaches frosting consistency, add the sour cream, the eggs, and the vanilla. Mix well, trying to avoid chunks as much as possible. Pour that into your cookie-crust.

Before we throw this in the oven, there's just one last (but vitally important) step: put in the cookie dough. Grab the cookie dough you set aside earlier and form balls of varying sizes, dropping them essentially at random throughout the cheesecake. You may have to press them in a little bit. Fill to your liking. It should be noted that it feels like you are putting a lot more dough in than you actually are-- this cheesecake is going to get sliced, and in order to get a decent amount of dough-per-slice, it's going to feel like you are overloading the cake with dough. Try to remember where you've put lumps of dough before and spread them over the whole cheesecake so no one gets left out. You may or may not use all of the dough (I did). When you're ready, pop that baby into the oven (it's still at 350, right?) for 40 minutes to an hour. Be sure to watch it, cheesecakes can be temperamental in their cooking times. It should be solid, with only a slight jiggle in the middle. The edges will be getting golden brown.

While it's baking, make the sauce: Combine the sour cream, sugar and vanilla, and mix until it's smooth. Put it in the fridge until the cake comes out of the oven, at which point you should spread it liberally over the hot cheesecake. Garnish the cake with leftover cookies (if you haven't eaten all of them yet) and serve hot, or put in the fridge for a bit and serve it cold. Either is absolutely delicious.

I have pictures of cookies and the cheesecake. I'll get them up here at some point. Until then, you'll have to make it to see it!

~Chef G

Blondies are Delicious!

Why are brownies so delicious? I know, this post isn't about brownies, but it's worth considering the question first. Personal opinion: Brownies are delicious because they satisfy certain needs: when done right, they're chocolatey, moist, and just the right kind of chewy. (Maybe some of you prefer your brownies cake-y. That's okay too, I guess) I don't even know. They have this texture that is just absolutely mind-blowing.

I think what I'm trying to say is that sometimes, you want the texture but not so much the taste. Maybe you're not in a chocolate mood. Maybe you're not the biggest fan of chocolate (*cough* *cough*) Either way, a blondie is an excellent alternative. It's like a brownie, but instead of chocolate, you have a nice caramel/butterscotch/brown-sugar flavor. They're deep without being too deep. And you can always add more or fewer chocolate chips to suit your chocolate tastes.

That being said, I decided one day to make blondies. The problem is, I'm a bit crazy, and the house didn't have butterscotch chips. 1 + 1 equals I make my own butterscotch. Let's get to the recipe.

Ingredients!


4 tbsp butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup heavy cream

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 egg
vanilla
2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips


Yes, there is a space there in between some of the ingredients. Yes, vanilla is listed twice. This has to do with the whole making-butterscotch-thing. I used the recipe found here, but I'll describe my own experience with the whole process. All the butterscotch recipes I found seemed a little over-dramatic, with their dire warnings of having everything nearby and measured because otherwise you'll burn it all and everything will be ruined forever! As long as you know where the ingredients are, or have already brought them out on the counter, you have time to measure things as you go. Baking is not the LHC. Small errors can and do get lost in the noise. You're fine.

Directions!

Anyway, here we go with the instructions. (Step 0: Preheat your oven to about 350F.) First you're going to want to melt the butter in a medium-size saucepan. (Low to medium heat is fine -- you don't want to be a scorching temperatures) Keep in mind the fact that you will a) be adding a cup of sugar and b) these things like to bubble up well beyond the capacity for bubbling you assumed they had. When your butter is basically melted, toss in the brown sugar and stir it all together. At this point, it resembles something delicious. Resist temptation to eat. It gets better.

Wait for a bit, stirring to make sure you don't scorch the poor thing. It may not look like much, but after a while, the sugar will start to melt and the whole thing will start coming together into one giant mass. When it starts looking more like liquid than, well, sugar soaking in butter (this is a judgement call), you can add the cream. The recipe advises using a whisk at this point and that's a pretty good idea. It'll help incorporate the cream better, but it's not super-essential. Now cook this baby, but not too much. At the maximum, you should be hitting soft-ball stage, but thinner than that is fine. (If you're testing for hardness, feel free to take this moment to sample some of the butterscotch. It's really quite tasty.) Once you're satisfied with the butterscotch, take it off the heat and set it aside to cool for a bit. (I'm a fan of the refrigerator. Anyone else?) We'll need it in a second.

Now, while that's on its way to room temperature, mix together your dry ingredients here: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.You can sift if you're feeling nervous about your flour, otherwise, it's not really worth it. Set that aside.

Is your butterscotch cool yet? Is it? Well, okay, is it hot enough to cook the egg if you put the egg in? Ah, then we have a problem. When you feel the butterscotch has cooled down enough, you're going to want to whisk in the egg and a decent amount of vanilla. (That may be personal preference talking) If the temperature is really a source of worry, and your butterscotch is liquid enough to permit it, I'd say start with mixing the butterscotch into the egg. It's easier to bring the egg up to temperature of the butterscotch because the butterscotch currently has a majority vote. Eitherway, get that egg and vanilla in there.

Then start adding the flour mixture, a little at a time. You should end up with a delicious, medium-light-brown batter Try and keep it as smooth as possible. This recipe advocates sprinkling your chocolate chips on top, but I just mixed them in. They're all really going to end up on the bottom anyway. Do as you see fit. Pour that mixture into a buttered 9x9 pan. (There's really enough butter already in the butterscotch, but just in case) Slide that pan into the oven for 20-30 minutes (keep an eye on it, of course) and voila! blondies made from your own butterscotch. And it wasn't even that hard!

For the record, I doubled (tripled? I don't really remember) the recipe, because I had a bunch of people to feed. Compliments from all quarters. Really tasty with ice cream and even tasty when frozen solid (it was liquid nitrogen ice cream and we had extra LN2).

If you would like a picture, I only have this one of the batter in the pan. The blondies got eaten too quickly to snap any shots in between oven and stomach, so you'll have to deal with the raw goods.


Have fun making and baking!

~Chef G

Christmas in July: Peppermint Bark

Peppermint Bark is simple in idea and presentation, but is rather difficult to make properly. Essentially, it is a layer of white chocolate, one of dark/semi-sweet chocolate, covered with crushed starlight mints. I don’t have exact measurements, because I just improvised, but here’s roughly what you should do.

Ingredients:

White chocolate chips

Dark or semi-sweet chips

Butter/shortening

Cream

Starlight mints

----

Grease jelly-roll pan (cookie sheet with edges). Unwrap mints, and crush into chunks. If you have a meat tenderizer or hammer, place the mints in a large Ziploc bag, and hit each one individually. Alternatively, a rolling pin could be used over the bag. If you’re really desperate, put the mints in that bag, which can be slung into a counter repeatedly. That is what I had to do, because I couldn’t find any useful implements in the kitchen. Be careful when crushing the mints, because you don’t want a fine powder; chunks about 1/8” are actually preferable.

Heat cream in a double-boiler with a small amount of butter, warming until butter melts. Add in white chocolate chips, stirring until melted. The consistency should be thin enough to spread thinly, but thick enough that it’ll harden. Pour onto cookie sheet, and with offset spatula, smooth out the chocolate to the edges. Ideally, the layer should be about 1/8th of an inch thick. Let chocolate harden.

Repeat chocolate-melting process, but with dark chocolate chips instead of white. Once spread onto pan, sprinkle mint chunks, and press in lightly.

Refrigerate until serving time. If the bark is thin enough, it can simply be broken, but if the chocolate didn’t harden properly or is too thick, simply cut into bars and serve.

Apologies, but since I was making these for an all-campus party, and drunk people are hungry vultures, I unfortunately do not have pictures of these. Oh well, that simply makes an excuse to make them again, right?

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Lemony Bars

This kind of feels like I’m cheating, in that this recipe is almost identical to the one provided on the back of many condensed-milk cans, but I do so adore citrus desserts. You’ll just have to bear with me.

Also, apologies for the horrid photo quality.

Ingredients:

2 cups AP flour

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 tablespoons finely grated lemon peel, divided

1 can (14 oz.) condensed milk.

4 large eggs

2/3 cup lemon juice

1 tablespoon AP flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

4 drops yellow food coloring (optional)

Sifted powdered sugar (optional)

----

Preheat oven to 350*, and for ease in serving and cleanup, line a 13x9 inch pan with aluminum foil, or grease it.

For crust:

Combine flour and powdered sugar in medium bowl. Cut in butter, and add vanilla plus one tablespoon of lemon peel; mix until well incorporated. Press into pan, and bake for 20 minutes, or until slightly golden.

For filling:

Cream condensed milk and eggs until fluffy. Add in all remaining ingredients, aside from lemon peel. Stir until uniform; fold in lemon peel. Pour over crust, and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until filling solidifies.

Cool until room temperature, then refrigerate for 2 hours. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and cut into bars.

~ The Baker’s Apprentice/Chef A

Applesauce Cookies and Muffins

I found this recipe in an old cookie recipe pamphlet from the late ‘50s, and of course, have wanted to make it for a while. Additionally, Chef G recently acquired a contraption called the “Supershooter,” which oozes shapes, and is great for frosting and liquidy cookie batter. This batter ended up being too gooey, though, and didn’t hold its shape so well after extrusion. I added very few bran flakes, ‘cause I didn’t want them to clog the Supershooter, and so the cookies turned out to be very soft, but if you favor crunchier cookies, err on the higher amount of bran.

Supershooter in use

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups sifted cake flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon powdered cloves

1 cup canned applesauce

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 cup Crisco

1 cup sugar

1 egg

0-1 1/2 cups crushed bran flakes

----

Preheat oven to 375* and grease several cookie sheets.

Sift together flour, salt, and spices. In a small bowl, combine applesauce and soda. In a large bowl, cream shortening, egg and sugar until light. Add in dry mixture and applesauce alternatively, stirring until combined. Fold in bran flakes until texture suits you.

Drop by teaspoonfuls about 2” apart. Bake about 20 minutes, or until the edges darken slightly.

I got bored with the Supershooter, and it was late, and we had fresh blueberries. These factors aligned, and I decided to add blueberries (and a bit more applesauce) to the remaining batter and made muffins with them. They were quite delicious! I baked them for about 20 minutes as well, if I recall correctly. They should brown slightly around the side, and a toothpick inserted should come out clean.

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Basque Cake!

(Sorry this is such a long post, there's a story behind everything here. tl;dnr -- scroll down for the recipe and some pretty pictures.)

I've been meaning to make this recipe for a while. About nine months ago, it came up in conversation that a friend of mine was actually of Basque heritage. It just so happened that I had recently been at a meeting where I was served some of what was introduced to me as Basque Cake.
It was delicious, of course, with an interesting array of flavors, contained in a some kind of shortcake. It suddenly became my mission to make this cake for my Basque friend.
Call it a desire to reunite her with her heritage. Call it an excuse to bake.
I call it tasty.

The actual process of making the cakes (yes, always multiple) turned out to be somewhat of a journey. I found my first opportunity to make a Basque cake in April. There was to be a spectacular dinner, and I signed myself to contribute dessert (no surprise). The seed for Basque cake had been germinating somewhere in the back of my mind for several months at that point, but it wasn't yet ready to make its way into the world. First, I wanted to foray into the realm of cheesecakes. I decided to make a chocolate-chip cookie-dough cheesecake. Simple enough in principle, but delicious-sounding and complicated enough to keep me happy.

It was not to be. (Or was it? Come back in another month) One of the other cooks making a dessert had decided that *she* wanted to make cheesecake, and as I was (unsurprisingly) late in submitting my choice for dessert, I bowed out of the competition. Now I was stuck, because I didn't want to make anything resembling a cheesecake, and dessert number three was slated to be something cookie-like (it turned out to be cinnamon rolls). Suddenly, I was struck with the realization -- the something in between a cheesecake and a cookie could very well be a Basque cake.

The Basque cake, in theory, is a shortdough crust filled with custard and then covered with a top crust and baked, and as it bakes the custard and the crust intermingle and produce one solid cake-like delicious mass. This was my way out! I quickly looked around for a good recipe.

It turns out that this is actually quite difficult. Paraphrasing one location, everybody has their own Basque cake recipe, and each one is different. And it was true. Every recipe I found had some different interpretation of what a Basque cake was and/or how to make one.

I decided to synthesize a recipe. I made myself a custard, and a crust dough. I assembled my cakes, and I put the two of them in the oven, side by side, brothers on a tasty mission. I checked on them over the next hour or so, as the crust appeared to brown nicely, but the central custard remained unperturbed. Finally, it seemed to have reached some kind of edible consistency, like a pie. At the very least I could hope to cut it, and not have it ooze out from the sides of the cut.

I took my cakes out of the oven, one at a time.

Tragedy struck as I took the second cake. A carelessly replaced oven rack tilted as I pulled it out for better access to my cake. The springform pan I was using, having a low coefficient of friction as any good pan should, started on its own, unintentional journey out of the oven. As it picked up speed, time slowed down. I heard it slide down the rack, looked down, tried to grab the cake with one clumsy oven mitt and the rack with the other, succeeded in neither, and jumped back just in time to get oven-hot custard all down the front of my pants.

I struggled to get the rack back in the oven, all the while aware that there was scalding-hot food just millimeters away from my skin. I was informed by onlookers and helpers that I should remove my pants. But the cake was too important. I grabbed the springform from the floor (where it had actually landed face-up -- crust empty of custard, but face up -- small miracles) and tried to figure out if I could scoop custard into the empty shell. But it was all either on me or on the floor, and mostly all undesirable.

The custard on my pants cooled actually pretty fast, so I had a tasty, portable snack (I had just done laundry, okay?) while I figured out what to do with the remains of my eviscerated cake. At the suggestion of another kitchen occupant, I made some whipped cream, spooned it into the cavity, and sprinkled blueberries on top. It looked beautiful, but it covered a heart of lies.
Fortunately, one of the cakes was still whole, so I served two different kinds of desserts that night -- a Basque cake intact, but with sadly very liquid custard, and a whipped cream pie in a cake-shell.

My Basque friend never actually made it to dinner.

When I set out a second time to make these cakes, I had learned from my mistakes. I used new parts of recipes and changed some, changed the amounts of crust and custard in proportion to each other, played around. What came out was just about enough for four cakes (though I only made three). I have halved the recipe here, so that you may enjoy smaller portions than I burdened myself with (it took me a week and a half of making cakes every few days to exhaust my supply of dough and custard).

Without further ado, I present you my interpretation of the Basque cake:

Custard:

4 cups milk
Vanilla (2 beans, if you have them, otherwise extract works fine)
1-1/2 cup white sugar
6 egg yolks
1 cup flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
Flavorings

A quick note: These ambiguous "flavorings" I mention are any number of things that are supposed to be added to the custard and/or the crust to give it that special Basque flavor. Most often they include some kind of orange flavoring, as well as a spirit of sorts, whether it be rum, brandy, or Armagnac (a type of brandy from the Armagnac region in France). I rifled through what leftover alcohol was in our pantry and pieced something together. Don't worry too much about what goes into it, as long as you feel the flavor is sufficiently deep but citrus-y. You will need anywhere from 1 tbsp. to almost a cup of the liquid, depending on how strong you want the flavor. I kept it to a rough couple of tablespoons.

To make the custard, put the milk on the stove (careful with the selection of pot size -- when milk foams it nearly triples in volume for a moment, so try to avoid overflow) and add vanilla extract. If you have vanilla beans, split them open and add to the milk instead of extract. Bring to a boil. (If you are using beans, once the milk reaches a boil, take it off heat, fish out the beans, and scrape the insides into the milk, discarding the husk afterward.) Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until it turns a lovely pale yellow color. Combine the flour and salt, and then add that flour to the eggs/sugar and whisk until smooth.

Now the fun part. Add the milk (and vanilla) to the egg mixture. The milk is going to be a lot hotter than the eggs, so in order not to fry the eggs immediately upon contact, you must start with small amounts of the hot liquid, whisking the entire time, until the temperature of the egg mixture starts to raise to the point that pouring more of the hot milk in won't leave you with a scrambled-egg custard. (This is called tempering)

Once the two are combined, place them back on medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture becomes thick. At that point, add the butter (in small chunks) and the 'flavorings' to the custard. Stir until the butter is melted.
While it is still warm and pliable, pour the custard into a shallow dish, and cover the surface of the custard with plastic wrap, pressing carefully to remove the largest of air-bubbles inside.

Refrigerate the custard.
This is what it looks like once it has reached custard-hood:


Crust:

2 cups finely-ground almonds
2 cups AP flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 cup butter
1-1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp. almond extract
citrus zest (optional)

One of the recipes I used called for almond meal, and not having that, I put almonds in a food processor (okay, I'll be honest, a blender) and ground them into a fine powder. Be careful with this, though, because the almond is not entirely dry, and so you will start to get clumps of what is almost a paste, and it will be hard to completely pulverize all the almonds. I recommend getting the almonds down to a moderately fine consistency and then mixing in a bit of the flour before taking it down to almond-meal fineness.

Combine the flour, almonds, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
Cream together the butter and sugar, as if you were making cookies. Add the eggs and then the almond extract. (If you're like me, you might also add vanilla extract. There is nothing that vanilla cannot go into) If you want an extra citrus-y flavor, add a teaspoon or so of lemon or orange zest.
Slowly add the flour mixture. You should have what seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a cookie dough. Put it in the fridge to cool (or the freezer, if you're super-impatient, I suppose. Just don't forget about it).

Putting it all together:
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch pie tin. This pan worked so much better than the springforms I used the first time.
The dough is exceedingly buttery (read: delicious) so you'll have to be both swift and cautious with this part. Pull off about a quarter of the dough (remember, this recipe makes about two cakes) and roll it out to about 1/4-inch thickness. (It helps so much to roll between two sheets of plastic wrap. It doesn't stick to the rolling pin or the rolling surface.) You should have enough surface area to cover the bottom and sides of your pie pan. If the dough seems to warm and pliable, stick it back in the fridge for a few minutes. Lay this rolled dough into the buttered pan. Carefully press it down into the pan, filling all the edges without breaking the dough. It will probably come up over the sides. This is perfectly fine.
Prick the bottom of the dough with a fork as if you were making a pie. It will help the custard and crust come together more nicely.

Take about half of the custard you prepared and put it into the pie shell you have created for yourself. Take care not to make it too deep (unless you really like custard, of course). About 1/2-inch deep works well. (Don't worry about filling the pie shell all the way to the top)

Note: You don't have to (and may not) end up using all the custard you made. When I made this recipe, I gave about a third of the custard to Chef A for Nanaimo bars and still had enough for three cakes. Custard is a) delicious all by itself and b) good in many other recipes.

This is your cake at this point:


Now take another 1/4 of your dough and roll it out again, to about 1/4-inch thickness. (You may have to throw this one in the fridge as well) Lightly prick the surface of the dough with a fork, then invert it onto the waiting cake-shell-filled-with-custard. Press out all air bubbles, then crimp the edges of the cake, cut off excess material, and pop that baby into the oven. If you want to (and I recommend it) cover the edges with foil to prevent them from burning/browning too quickly.

Cook 20-30 minutes, then go in with a sharp knife and make a couple of cuts in the surface to release steam. Return to the oven.
Let it cook for another 15-20 minutes. The crust will turn golden brown and look deliciously crispy. Like so:

Remove from oven and let cool. Voila!

P.S. My Basque friend didn't get any of this cake either -- oh well, I guess I'll just have to make it again~!

Thanks for bearing with me,
~Chef G

High Time for Pie Time? Banana meringue pie

I love pie; it may be my favorite dessert category. I grew up not liking chocolate - I mostly credit or blame my super-chocoholic family. Whenever we would go out to eat, the majority unwaveringly ruled in favor of the most chocolatey, richest item offered. Not being so fond of the brownish-hued delicacy to begin with, you can understand my frustration while facing dinner after dinner followed by molten chocolate cake and brownie fudge sundae and chocolate mousse and triple-chocolate chunk ice cream and double chocolate chip cookies and... Well, you might think I'm crazy; most people do have an odd reaction when I tell them I'm not terribly fond of it. To this day, given the choice between a chocolate sweet and a cocoa-free treat, I'm as likely to pick one as I am to pick the other. I've grown to appreciate chocolate, but I still cannot tolerate dark chocolate; I much prefer white and milk chocolate.

I certainly bake with a lot of chocolate, as you can see, but that's largely due to the fact that 1) our kitchens almost always have chocolate in some form, 2) fruits are rarer in the quantity in which we use them and 3) the universe seems to start salivating when any of the senses detect a hint of chocolate. Even scientifically, the genus of the chocolate tree - Theobroma - translates to "food of the gods." I suppose, every time I make a dessert with chocolate, and my housemates and friends devour their offering, they reach closer to godliness. I believe I can come to terms with that, more or less.

Oh, but I've digressed so far away from the topic of choice - pies - that I must take a moment and breathe deeply and imagine a delectable slice of a lattice-worked, steaming, sugary masterpiece. Fruit pies, in my opinion, are the pinnacle of mouthwateringly-delicious non-chocolate desserts. The flaky crust, the gooey fruity filling, the crunchy top crust, the meringue, the whipped cream, the paired ice cream... I adore it all.

[Oh God, it's now past 2am and I'm so into this post that I'm famished, and the only option for me right now is a flourless chocolate cake made yesterday. If there exists a cake that is more chocolate-y, I've yet to meet it. Even with my blooming tolerance for chocolate, I'm rather terrified of that cake. Someone send me a slice of fruit pie through the interwebs right now!]

Back to pie. Specifically, Banana Meringue Pie. The idea for this came from a good friend, actually. Her mother and brother were coming to visit our area, and her brother had requested a banana pie. Immediately, we were drawn to banana cream pie, but after snooping around on the interwebs, we found a meringue pie. Lemon meringue pie is amazing, both to eat and bake, and despite my inability to properly whip egg whites for anything else, I have had remarkable success making meringue. The filling part is generally more problematic, though, but for this recipe, I increased the cornstarch because the innards are always more liquidy than any pie should be. I was also intrigued yet wary of the separate banana slices and pudding, but I think the end result was rather satisfying. The crust used here is my go-to pie crust recipe, as it's flakey and forgiving and filled with Crisco. If you're not a fan of crisco, butter can be used in its stead, but will of course give you a different taste and consistency.

For the crust:

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups flour + some for rolling

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon shortening

About 1/4 cup water

----

Preheat oven to 375*F.

Mix together flour and salt. Knead in the tablespoons of shortening to the other ingredients until crumbly. Add in the water slowly, while massaging the dough, until it forms a ball. Barely knead the remaining teaspoon of shortening in, so that some streaks of fat still remain; this will make the dough flaky and light.

Roll the ball between two sheets of parchment or waxed paper, or if you're desperate and live in an under-stocked kitchen, plastic wrap will suffice. The dough is pretty easy to work with and rather forgiving, so you should easily be able to make a 12" circle, a standard diameter for a 9" pie. Remove the top sheet, and flip the crust into your pie dish. Press the dough into place, making sure in settles into the pan, and then remove the other sheet. With a knife, remove the excess crust on the edges, and then poke holes in the crust with a little fork. And then hug a spoon, because it's feeling lonely and left out of the utensil-love.

Bake the pie for 10-15 minutes, until it's a light golden brown.

For the filling:

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar

3/8 cup cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 cups whole milk

4 egg yolks, beaten (reserve the whites for later, they'll go into the meringue)

3 tablespoons butter

1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla

3 ripe to overripe bananas, peeled and sliced in 1/4 inch segments

----

Combine sugar, cornstarch, salt, and milk in large sauce pot. Whisk together and cook over medium heat until mixture thickens and slowly releases the bubbles. Cook on low for another two to three minutes. Pour a small portion of the milk mixture into the beaten egg yolks to temper them; stir together, and then add yolk mixture to remaining milk mixture. Return the pot to medium-low heat for two to three minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and add in butter and vanilla, stirring until smooth and well-combined.

Cover the crust's bottom with a single layer of bananas, and scoop a small portion of the pudding - enough to fill the spaces between the bananas and barely cover the bananas - into the crust. Add another layer of bananas, and once more scoop a bit of pudding on top. Continue until out of pudding or near the top of the crust (leave at least 1/8 of an inch of crust exposed, so that the meringue can fill the space and form a seal). If you end up with extra bananas, layer them on top of the pudding and gently press down. Set aside the pie.

For the meringue:

Ingredients:

4 egg whites (reserved from earlier, approximately room temperature)

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup sugar

----

Preheat oven to 350*F.

Add egg whites to a large mixing bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium speed until bubbled and frothy; now add the vanilla and cream of tartar. Continue beating until glossiness develops, then slowly add sugar to mixture. Beat another 4 minutes or so, until stiff peaks form - when the still beaters are removed from the batter, the shape is maintained. It's important not to overbeat the meringue, as it then has the potential to collapse, but I've never had serious issues with pies failing. Yet.

With a rubber spatula, cover the pie with the meringue mixture. Be sure to completely cover the pudding, 'sealing' it in with the meringue and the crust's edge. I like to create a gentle curve, and then I take the spatula and gently 'slap' the whipped egg whites to create the peaks characteristic of meringue pies. Repeat this a few times (don't overdo it!) until small peaks cover the pie.

Slide pie carefully into oven and bake 12-15 minutes, turning once. When the meringue has turned lightly golden at the tips, remove and cool to room temperature, then move to refrigerator. Keep uncovered to prevent the meringue from weeping; if it does, don't fret too much. I think the caramel-colored tears are actually quite pretty and tasty. Maybe that's just me, though.

Apologies for the lack of photos! As I mentioned, I made these with a friend for her family, and so I unfortunately couldn't snag any finished-product photos.

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Banana-nana Bread

So, I've now made this recipe twice, and am about to make it a third time. The wonders of buying quickly-ripening fruits in large quantities for an uninterested house.

Anyway. This recipe is rather simple, and quite tasty. I've been tripling it, but again, we have a huge house and a mammoth supply of bananas. Or enough bananas to fill a mammoth. Whatever.

Ingredients:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1 cup + 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons whole-wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 2/3 cups mashed overripe bananas

2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons sour cream

Splash vanilla

Butter/Crisco/Fat of choice for greasing

Additional optional goodies: cinnamon/sugar mixture, chopped walnuts, chocolate chips, nutella

----

Basic Banana Bread:

Preheat oven to 350* and lightly grease a loaf pan or muffin tins

In a large bowl, mix the first four ingredients. Create a well in the center.

In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter until fluffy, adding the eggs gradually. With the beaters on medium, add in the bananas, sour cream, and vanilla, scraping the sides with a spatula occasionally. Mix until well blended.

Pour the wet mixture into the dry goods, and mix just until incorporated. This is crucial - overmixing will lead to denser, drier bread while undermixing will create surprise flour-clumps of doom.

Once mixed, pour into the greased loaf pan, and pop into the oven for 60 or so minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. I turn mine around a little more than halfway through baking, but our ovens are not so kind.

Once out of the oven, let cool for 15 minutes, then run a butter knife around the edges, flip onto a cooling rack, and remove pan. Or you can just run the butter knife around, and serve it in the pan to your hungry housemates. Which, to be honest, is what happens for me.

Special Breads:

If adding walnuts, add about a cupful to the dry ingredients.

If adding chocolate chips, coat them in flour, add about a cup-and-a-half once the wet and dry ingredients are mixed. Once poured into the pan, add chocolate chips on top of the batter.

If adding cinnamon, sprinkle some on the greased pan, and add 1 tablespoon to the dry ingredients

If adding Nutella, pour half the batter into the pan, drop teaspoonfuls over the batter, run a knife through it, and then add the rest of the batter.

If adding peanut butter, follow Nutella directions, directly above.

~ The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Edit: Pictures added, as well as some additional "special breads!"

Absurdly Easy Chocolate Fudge

Summertime, for me at least, means fudge. It doesn't require baking (and heating up the kitchen), and I prefer it when it is stored in the fridge. I actually made this on the 14th for a friend back home. I sent off most of the fudge, and have reports that it kept wonderfully on its journey, and is now mostly gone. Quick consumption: the mark of a job well done. Yay!

This recipe is for chocolate fudge at it's simplest. Hopefully, when I gain access to more ingredients, I'll do a rocky-road fudge (my personal favorite), or a chocolate-swirl, or a peanut-butter-swirl... The possibilities are endless, which I think is part of the reason I adore fudge so. I made 1.5 times what the recipe called for, but that was only because we ran out of chocolate chips. Tragedy!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cans (14 oz each) sweetened condensed milk.

6 tablespoons butter, softened

4.5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or any kind of chip, really. The chocolates, peanut butter, butterscotch, etc. It's up to you!)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

----

Firstly, prepare your mold for the fudge. I used a deep cookie sheet because I like thin fudge and I couldn't find a clean casserole pan. Butter the surface, and cover the sides with a nice large piece of plastic wrap. The butter helps keep the wrap in place while pouring, and the plastic makes fudge extraction easy.

Fix a double boiler, making sure the water doesn't contact the top pan, and that the water just lightly simmers. Combine the condensed milk and butter, stirring until the butter melts. Add in the chocolate chips gradually, mixing until the chips melt. Once liquified and to the softball stage, pour in the vanilla, and just mix until incorporate. Watch that it doesn't seize, but I had no problem with that.

Pour the fudge into the mold, lightly shaking the pan back and forth to evenly spread the fudge. Put in the fridge for at least two hours, until set. After it sets, it should be good if left out at room temperature, but if the weather is particularly warm, just keep it in the fridge.

~The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

Edit: Picture added, and a Rocky Road fudge recipe might be coming up shortly, since we now have marshmallows and walnuts stocked. Get excited!

Rainbow Cupcakes

So, this recipe is more about presentation than anything special, taste-wise. My co-baker might disagree wildly, but these little cakes were all about the coloring, with a nice enough flavor, but nothing mind-blowingly awesome.

As you can see, however, the colors themselves were UNBELIEVABLE, so all-in-all, these are definitely one of my favorite things we've baked so far. I'm particularly proud of the green, which I supposedly over-dyed, but it's so PRETTY! So vibrant and happy and cute and completely nom-able.

And now the truth comes out. I'm not really sure what the recipe was. We made a simple, light-colored vanilla cake batter, divided it into seven bowls (although we ended up making six colors for the "rainbow" and just had fun with the last batch). For each, we added quite a bit of food color, mixed it in, and dolloped a bit in each cupcake cavity. By repeating this process, we got the vibrant separate layers. The "reverse rainbow" arch was simply a result of the blobs not layering out perfectly, and each addition sank in a bit rather than resting on top. I really can't think of a way to prevent this without expending way more energy than necessary. And to be truthful, I like the imperfect layering; it gives the already energetic cupcakes a bit more spunk, personality and fabulous flair.

To finish the cupcakes off (and not leave them 'naked', aka muffins), we made a plain white vanilla buttercream frosting. I unfortunately do not have any decent pictures of the frosted cupcakes, so you'll just have to use your imagination. Sorry!

~The Baker's Apprentice

THIN MINTS!

So, I've been trying to get this right since I found the recipe before Christmas. This is now my third try, and though the chocolate coating still needs massive improvement, the cookie part is nearly perfect! As my sister will tell you, words cannot describe how happy I was when I got the cookie part right. I may or may not have done a little victory dance in our kitchen... Also, this makes roughly 5 dozen cookies, give or take, so be prepared. That may sound like a lot, but in our house, they didn't even last 12 hours. Now THAT'S impressive. And it might be why our housemates are convinced that my co-baker and I are plotting to fatten them up for some evil fate.

Ingredients:

1 cup and 3 tablespoons butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 3/4 teaspoon peppermint OIL! (Oil might be painful to find, but it's much better than extract, quality-wise. You can use extract in a pinch, but definitely up the amount used).

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 3/4 cup All-purpose flour

1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

----

In a large bowl, cream together butter, then the sugars, then the egg. Add in the extracts, and blend for two minutes (or more).

Sift all remaining ingredients into a medium bowl, and add gradually to the wet mixture. Blend until incorporated, scraping sides with a spatula as necessary.

Freeze dough in several (about three) large balls. This is because the dough warms up and becomes gooey very rapidly, so keep whatever you're not working with in the freezer. Your

hands will thank you.

Preheat oven to 350*.

Once dough is hardened (about an hour), take out a block at a time, and roll small, 1-inch balls on to greased cookie sheets. Place the blobs about three inches apart.

With a cup dipped in cocoa powder, flatten the balls until they're about 1/4 inch thick. Bake 15-20 minutes, until the tops look dry and the cookies are firm; turn once during baking. Let cookies cool completely.

Now this next part needs work. I won't put up my proportions because 1) I don't know them precisely and 2) my version fails, and the cookies need to be frozen to not instantly melt everywhere. Oops... The trick is to get the mixture thin enough to dip well, but thick enough to harden. Chocolate only occasionally submits to my demands, and this was not one of those times, sadly.

But here's what you'll need:

Chocolate chips (probably not semi-sweet, 'cause that's what I used, and it wasn't sweet enough. Of course, at this point, you're probably well aware of my absurd sweet-tooth, but still, be warned)

Butter/Crisco

Heavy Cream

Peppermint Oil

----

Heat the cream and butter/crisco in a double boiler. Gradually add the chocolate chips, and a small amount of the peppermint. Using a fork and wooden spoon, dip the cookies and cover completely. Set on aluminum foil to cool, then move to fridge/freezer for complete setting. Beautiful:

Noms! Happy baking.

~The Baker's Apprentice/Chef A

EDIT: The chocolate coating actually did eventually set such that they don't have to be in the freezer constantly, but I still have no idea what the proportions are. Sorry!

Chocolate Cake with Strawberry Frosting

I'm going to start this one off with a picture:


Okay. So my dad was coming into town, and, having not baked in a while, I asked him if he had any requests for baked goods. Chocolate-chip cookies or chocolate cake. Okay, I can work with that. I just made cookies (still playing with the recipe, get back to you on that), so I figured I should just go for a cake. (not to mention the we just got new springform pans.)

Cake start!

So the recipe I was working off of had (according to a bunch of comments) not nearly enough chocolate, so I did what any reasonable person would do, and sextupled it. So instead of a 1/2 cup of chips, I had 3. Which meant that when I was trying to make a custard out of milk/chocolate, it needed more milk. I still don't know if I would classify it as a 'custard'. Okay, here's the recipe:

Cake:

1 1/2 cups milk
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup coca powder
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
Vanilla extract
3/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon water
2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar (sifted) (optional)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a pan of an appropriate size. (This filled our 10" springform pan quite nicely) Melt the chocolate chips with the milk, add the cocoa powder, and stir until you get a nice, smooth, thick consistency.
Cream together the butter and sugar, then add eggs, vanilla and sour cream. Mix well. Dissolve the baking soda in the water, and add it to the mixture, followed by the flour. Add the melted chocolate mixture.
At this point, taste the batter. If it's too chocolate-y, too dark for your tastes (it was for mine) mix in the powdered sugar. It lightens the taste nicely, and keeps the mixture smooth.
Pour the batter into the cake pan, and stick it in the oven!
The recipe said 40 minutes to an hour, but in our oven, when it wasn't done after an hour, I turned it up to 375 and it still took another half hour. (This is, of course, the slow oven)
Which is to say -- keep an eye on this cake after you pass the 40 minute mark, but don't expect that it won't take more than an hour.

Frosting (Strawberry):

10 oz. Strawberry Jam (or some other fruit)
fruit-flavored vodka
8 oz. cream cheese
8 oz. butter
1 cup powdered sugar
Vanilla

All of these numbers are approximate. The plan was originally to make a sacher-torte -esque fruit glaze and then chocolate ganache, so we took out the jam. And then changed our minds. So thinking quickly, we threw the jam onto the stove with a little Strawberry Vodka to thin it out, and mixed it with basic frosting-ingredients. Play around with amounts to satisfy your particular tastebuds. All you need to do is cream them all together, and taste-test. It'll be a bit thin, so refrigerate/freeze before using to thicken.

Frosting (Vanilla):

Cream-cheese
Butter
Powdered sugar
Vanilla

This was just for decoration. I throw together equal parts cream cheese and butter, and then add sugar to taste.

So, once the cake was out of the oven, Chef A cut it in half, filled it with about a third of the strawberry frosting, and then reassembled the cake, using the rest of the strawberry to cover the cake.
At this point, I came back from having lunch with my dad, took a slice for me and one for him. It was only after we had eaten them that I realized I wanted to decorate the cake better. So I threw the vanilla frosting together and piped it onto the Pac-man of cake that was left.



If I haven't said it, this cake was delicious. It's just the right mix of dense flavor and light texture, and the strawberry frosting just complements it so well. The sour cream makes it nice and moist, and there's plenty of chocolate flavor to satisfy even the most hardcore of chocoholics.

My new go-to chocolate cake recipe. (Although I have a great chocolate sheet-cake recipe I should make again)

Happy baking!

~Chef G

Vegan Chocolate-Chip Cookie Bars

So, yesterday I helped out with a wonderful student-run festival at my university. I could go on about how awesome the whole event was, but since I imagine you're here for the recipes and not to hear about my life, I'll stick to the plan. For the event, I made vegan chocolate-chip cookies. I've never found a recipe online that I liked particularly, since I don't often have access to manufactured egg- or butter-replacers, so this I mostly just made up. Still no egg-replacer, since the store I went to - usually a dependable store for these things - didn't even stock anything of the sort. Also note, I made this recipe on the massive scale (roughly six times these amounts), and decreased that amount for you, so this is rougher than usual. I'll probably make it again soon and make actually cookies, and when I do, I'll be sure to post that version.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup nuts (I used walnuts and almonds)

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon*

1 3/4 cups vegan chocolate chips* (Trader Joe's semi-sweet chips are vegan, which are what I used)

1 c turbinado sugar

1/4 cup vegan butter substitute, room temperature (I used Earth Balance original organic)

1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce

2 teaspoons vanilla*

1/3 cup vanilla soymilk

----

Preheat oven to 350*.

Put nuts in a food processor, and blend until finely ground. I found that, once they reached a certain grain-size, that they started to stick together. Add a bit of the flour to the mix, and it should stop sticking together and grind better.

Combine flour, nut powder, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon in large mixing bowl. Form a well in the center, and set aside.

In a food processor, grind the sugar until fine.

In separate bowl, cream butter substitute and sugar, adding the applesauce gradually. Add in the vanilla and soymilk, mix again, and add to the dry ingredients, along with the chocolate chips. Mix until incorporated, but don't overmix.

Now, you can shape them into cookies, or, like me, you can make cookie cake. Either way, place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake them for about 8 minutes, turn them, and bake them another 6 minutes. I warn you that our ovens bake things slowly, and these cookies will not look set when they're actually quite done. Also, these times were for the massive cookie cake, so I must apologize for how ridiculously unhelpful I am forced to be about timing. The edges should get just a little darker, and then they'll be ready to come out. If you bake them too long, they'll be quite hard and very sad.

* As usual, these are just guesstimates for how much I put in. More or less is always fine (although why you'd ever want less of tasty things is beyond me). Well, if you add too much chocolate, the bars are overwhelmed, as they were the first time I made this. Even if you love chocolate, for the love of all things holy, do not add anywhere near 3 cups of chips. Bad things happen. If you simply must, sprinkle them on top before you bake the bars.

Mmm, photo to come later.

~The Baker's Apprentice