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